The Muslims battling to stop 5-year-old girls wearing hijab
‘Our schools are being politicised’
MUSLIM women are leading a campaign to ban girls as young as five from wearing the hijab in school.
They are to meet Ofsted chiefs after warning that Britain has ‘an abysmal record of protecting young Muslim girls, who suffer under the pretext of protecting religious freedoms’.
It comes after a survey found that nearly a fifth of state primaries – including many Church of England schools – had added the religious headscarves to their uniform policies.
Ofsted, the education watchdog, has expressed concern about whether the trend results from pressure from religious leaders and parents. Now Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of schools, is to meet a group aiming to curb the practice in younger girls.
The campaigners, led by Muslim former Labour parliamentary candidate Amina Lone, yesterday compared the practice to the compulsory veiling of women in ultra-conservative countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iran.
‘Our country has an abysmal record of protecting young Muslim girls, who suffer under the pretext of protecting religious freedoms,’ they wrote in a letter to The Sunday Times. ‘By turning a blind eye when our schools are being politicised, government contradicts itself when advocating more inclusion and cohesion.’
Critics argue that Islam does not traditionally require the hijab until puberty and say that allowing it in primary schools amounts to sexualising young children.
According to a survey by the newspaper last week, 18 per cent of 800 primary schools investigated have introduced the hijab – which covers the hair and neck but not the face – to their uniform policy as an optional item.
But there were dramatic variations in different areas with large Muslim populations. In Birmingham almost half of primaries allowed girls to wear the hijab, while in Tower Hamlets in East London and in Luton it was around one third. But in Manchester, Leicester and Blackburn the figure was only 6 per cent.
Some critics fear primary schools are agreeing to allow hijabs for fear of being branded Islamophobic. In the letter, also signed by Birmingham children’s rights campaigner Gina Khan, the group brand the trend ‘an affront to the historical fight for gender equality in our secular democracy’.
They add: ‘At a time of rising religious extremism ( from all faiths) around the world, this is not a time for the state to diminish our collective rights but to robustly defend hard- won freedoms and progressive values.’
While the group has not expressed an explicit stance on the hijab in state secondaries, it says women should be given ‘choice’ and children ‘freedom’.
An Ofsted source told The Sunday Times: ‘We are looking at whether there is evidence that schools are facing external pressure to adapt their policies.’