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October 13, 2006
UK: Muslim Woman Complains About School Forbidding Her Veil
A story from the BBC and Leeds Today describes how a Muslim woman, employed in a school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, was suspended after she refused to remove her face-covering veil, or nikab while teaching.
24-year old Aisha Azmi was employed as a language support worker by Headfield Church of England Junior School. Pupils were finding it hard to understand her when they could not see her lips moving, so she was asked to remove the veil. She refused, was suspended, and took the case to an employment tribunal at Kirklees Council. The tribunal's decision will be announced in two weeks.
The Muslim MP for Dewsbury, Shahid Malik, supported the decision made by the school. He said: "In schools the top priority has got to be the education of our children. I fully support the decision of the education authority and the school in requesting the classroom assistant remove her veil when teaching primary school children."
He continued: "I believe the education authority has bent over backwards to be accommodating and has been extremely reasonable and sensible in the decision it has come to. There is no religious obligation whatsoever for Muslim women to cover themselves up in front of primary school children."
Dewsbury South Tory Councillor Imtiaz Ameen said: "It's not conducive to learning at that age to cover your face, when there is no requirement to do so. Her position is unreasonable."
Most of the 529 children in the school are "Asian" (Pakistani or Bangladeshi). A report by Ofsted inspectors, made in February this year, stated: "Most of the children are of Pakistani or Indian heritage, and a few are from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, including white British. The first languages spoken by most children are Punjabi, Gujerati and Urdu, and many children are still learning to speak English."
The school's performance was not rated highly, and was given a notice to improve. The report said: "It is an inadequate school, providing unsatisfactory value for money. Children's speaking skills are poor and this holds them back in most aspects of their work."
Jim Dodds, who is spokesman for Kirklees Council's children's services said that the suspension of Ms Azmi had "nothing to do with religion".
He said: "We are simply trying to ensure that our children get the best possible education. Both pupils and teachers raised concerns because they were finding it difficult to make out what she was saying during lessons. We have a lot of pupils who do not speak English as a first language and you have to be able to see people's lips move when you are being taught. We asked this young lady to remove her veil when she was teaching English language, but she refused."
The woman was not prevented from wearing her veil outside of the lessons.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 13, 2006 8:23 AM
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