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November 24, 2006

UK: Muslim Veil Woman Is Sacked

There is no deliberate pun in the title of this posting. Aishah Azmi is a 23-year old who made headlines when she took her employers to a tribunal, following being suspended. Azmi was a teaching assistant at Headfield Church of England Junior School, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

This school has 529 children, many of whom are either Pakistani or Bangladeshi in origin. Azmi was employed to assist children aged 10 to 12 in Math and English, when for many pupils, English was not a first language. When she had her interview, she did not wear a face-veil (niqab), nor did she tell her future employers that she would insist upon wearing the veil.

Children at the school complained that they could not understand her, and she was asked by the school to remove her veil. She refused. As a result, she was sent home in November 2005, only a month after she had started her employment at Headfield school. In February 2006, she was suspended on full pay.

Her case against her employers became highlighted as it was reported after remarks were made by former foreign secretary Jack Straw, MP for Blackburn. Straw had written on October 5 that he asked Muslim constituents who visited him to remove their veils, in a column for the Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

The news of Azmi's tribunal became headline material, helped in no small part by Azmi herself, who appeared frequently in TV interviews, as evidenced in this video. Her own MP, Shahid Malik (a Muslim) supported the school's decision to suspend her. 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."

"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."

On October 14, Britain's race and faith minister, Phil Woolas, said that Azmi should be sacked. Woolas said: "She cannot teach a classroom of children wearing a veil. You cannot have a teacher who wears a veil simply because there are men in the room. She is denying the right of children to a full education by insisting that she wears the veil. If she is saying that she won't work with men, she is taking away the right of men to work in schools."

"By insisting that she will wear the veil if men are there, she's saying: 'I'll work with women, but not men'. That's sexual discrimination. No head-teacher could agree to that."

"There are limits in a liberal democracy. There are boundaries in a democracy and this is one of them. It's a boundary we can't cross," Woolas concluded.

The following day, Shahid Malik, MP for Dewsbury, said: "The basic thrust of what Phil (Woolas) says is just common sense. If you are not able to fulfil your job requirements then obviously it will be difficult for you to continue in that particular role."

On October 17, the prime minister, Tony Blair, was asked for his opinions on the matter. He said the Muslim face-veil was a "mark of separation". He said of Azmi's education authority: "I simply say that I back their handling of the case. I can see the reason why they came to the decision they did. Difficult though these issues are, they need to be raised and confronted."

On October 19, Azmi lost her claims that she was subjected to harassment on religious grounds and religious discrimination. These claims had been brought under the terms of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2004. However, she was awarded damages. Kirklees Council was ordered to pay her £1,100 ($2,074) as the tribunal ruled that she had been victimized as a result of the environment surrounding the case.

The tribunal said that its decisions had been made on October 6, and therefore had not been influenced by the comments made by politicians. Azmi was not happy with the verdict.

She said: "It is clear that discrimination has taken place and I am disappointed the tribunal has not been able to uphold that part of my claim. I am pleased the tribunal recognised the victimising way in which the school and local education authority have handled this matter and the distress that has caused me."

It was later revealed by the Daily Mail that Azmi regularly attended the Markazi mosque in Savile Town, Dewsbury, which is run by Tablighi Jamaat, the extremist Muslim political group. Her father Dr Mohammed Mulk had until recently headed the secondary school attached to the Tabighi Jamaat mosque.

This school was criticized by UK government schools inspectors as less a place of learning and more of a "madrassa". The report by Ofsted claimed that the school's "over-emphasis" on religion meant secular studies were neglected. It wrote: "Teachers showed limited understanding of pupils aptitudes, needs and prior attainments."

Azmi's father had responded to the Ofsted report by saying: "Parents send their children here for an Islamic education. They don't want their sons to take exams."

The Sunday Times revealed that Azmi had been acting under a fatwa made by a Tablighi Jamaat cleric, Mufti Yusuf Sacha, who had told her that a woman's duty was to wear a veil.

Since she became officially employed by the school in September 2005, 13 months ago, Azmi has actually spent no more than four weeks teaching. She has been receipt of full pay, and has tried to embarrass the school and Kirklees Education Authority into complying with her extremist politico-religious belief, even though she obtained the job by dishonestly failing to mention her veil-wearing.

Now, according to the BBC, the school has finally sacked Azmi. A spokesperson for Kirklees Council said that a hearing had taken place into "the circumstances that resulted in the suspension of a bilingual support worker at the school. As result of the hearing the committee decided to terminate the employment of the employee concerned."

Azmi has exploited this situation to promote her brand of Islam, at considerable public expense. Hopefully this will be the last one hears of her irritating and whining voice bleating on about her "rights", but somehow, I doubt it.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 24, 2006 10:43 PM

Comments

Posted by: Silvester at November 25, 2006 6:35 AM

Posted by: bowen at November 25, 2006 5:31 PM

Posted by: bowen at November 25, 2006 6:28 PM

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