To think that the mother/daughter duo who took Michaela to court should face some natural consequences?

But if your parents´ "didn´t believe education and religion should be together" why did they send you to a CofE school and were ok with you singing hymns and participating in nativities? You sort of confused me there. Church of England christianity IS religion, it isn´t a secular movement.

Definitely practice your religion in your time and don't impose your beliefs upon others.

Last year or the year before, I worked with a Director/manager of a big global company who quite soon told me about his Christian beliefs (I listened and asked questions but this was being polite). He was soon telling me though about why his wife worked X and what she did, Christian music festivals with his family - which I didn't really want to hear about. It can be hard to strike a balance between being polite to listen to conversation e.g. around religion or when to say, 'sorry, I don't think this belongs in workplace convos'.

This whole thing cost the tax payers £150,000 ( daily mail today ) I can't prove of this is correct or not, but think of who has gained here and you can bet it's the lawyers ( mostly)
This has annoyed me more than anything else.
It hasn't caused any cohesion or understanding of why it was felt this was needed , it's just made things worse.

I'll give my examples when I was younger at secondary school and I went to two:

• I went to a girls school, where the girls were a real mix of cultures and races, you didn't know what religion they were unless they told you but as far as I recall there was no bullying on a religious scale - race, yes, sometimes but not always. We had RE/RC lessons and learned about religion that way. The only time we actually knew about religion was when we had 2 Plymouth Brethren girls join our school for the first or second year of secondary school, they didn't tell us much about their religion but we guessed from the ways they were and weren't allowed to mix with us, again not a problem though. As far as I was aware though, though some children mixed with the same friendship groups and weren't diverse, others mixed with different friendship groups. One of my friends was a girl called Almaz who was Muslim and she was friends with both me and another friend of mine called E, she invited us to parties and weddings and was actually allowed to socialise with us in return (wouldn't be allowed now probably, was in 80s) as long as she let her parents know where she was, what she was doing.

• Second school was a private convent, we had again a mix of cultures and races and religions. The girls of different religions did sometimes mix together but also mixed with the rest of the class. We often had the girls whose parents owned Indian restaurants (there was one down the road from the school) exchange friendly banter and compare about how good/bad their restaurants were and we all laughed along together, presumably they were Muslim but it wasn't spelled out to us. One Muslim girl, A, she wasn't allowed out at all with us, but we were allowed to her DP's restaurant for meals and to eat/stay over. Once I'd been there a few times, her parents actually said, 'ok, you can stay with Gonna a few times overnight as we see she can be trusted'. They thought all we would be doing was studying, watching movies at home or going to the cinema. Her DP's apparently said to her, 'it's good you have friends from different cultures'. This friend eventually said to me, 'Could you let me come out with you properly and see what it's like?' I told her, 'look, if you do this, you'll be drinking underage (we all did this) but if you do want to come out that's fine'. I also said 'We'll make sure you're not found out and it's in a place where there's no likelihood of you being seen'. She bought some clothes which were 'going out clothes' but kept them at my house. She knew that drinking alcohol was haram and what else was haram but she wanted to experience this for herself. So she came out a few times with us, and drank and got drunk a few times and even met a white boy and had a brief fling with him. After this, although she came out very rarely with us, she decided to stop, just in case someone saw and I think she knew then, what going out properly was like. Then when she turned 18, she'd done her A levels, was all set to go to uni and wanted to go to uni, but had an arranged marriage, and though we still saw her, next thing we knew, she'd got married and they'd moved to Dubai.

• Re the above though - most of the Muslim girls didn't wear any sort of head covering ever, and all religious prayers took place out of school. One of the girls who was lovely, called Kwanza, she was fasting during Ramadan (allowed to do that) and she suddenly fainted in class and had to go to hospital because she'd gone unconscious. She got into trouble a bit after that, because she wasn't fasting in a safe way and it could've been dangerous for her. We had a Muslim form teacher (or one of our favourite ones) and one year, A arranged for us to collect money to buy her a special gift from us all which was a special saree with glitter and gold in it, the teacher didn't want to accept it as 'it's too nice, too luxurious' but we insisted she accept the gift. Some of the Muslim girls spent more time swapping tips on how to look Western yet modest at the same time and which skin whitening creams were the best to use (this was done in secret though). But they generally mixed really easily with the rest of us.

It seems to me in previous years that especially if you're Muslim there's so much more pressure to wear head coverings and to practice your religion and prove you're the most devout person there.

I worked in recent years with a lovely Muslim young woman who was actually Indian in origin but with very light skin. She did all the things she was supposed to do, wear modest clothing, hijab, went on holidays but wore a burkini. We used to go to Zara together to look at clothes. But she also had a boyfriend outside her home which her DP's didn't know about. We got really friendly and she told me all about her life (she'd lost a load of weight, so we swapped diet tips) and used to go for coffee sometimes after work. Once she told me (as I'd guessed where she was off to after work) she had a boyfriend but said her DP's would kill her if they found out, he wasn't 'from their village' or 'wasn't the right kind of Muslim, not chosen'. She said though 'you can't defy your parents, you are shunned if you do so, so you get very used to getting around the rules'. She socialised with the Muslims in the office but socialised with the rest of us too.

I'm baffled how something we have precious little concrete evidence of drives so much hate and turmoil on the off chance that one has backed the right (deity)

Maybe because it encourages tribalism and an I'm right/you're wrong mentality, which all too often brings unwelcome results?

Most of us, I believe, can rub along just fine with those of other faiths, respecting their right to their beliefs even if we don't share them. The problems only seem to start when the more aggressive of whatever persuasion start insisting that such-and-such has to happen or be accommodated - and all of this over what is after all a personal choice

As so many have said, follow whatever religion you want, but do it in your own time and don't expect to impose it on others

Well this girl won't be expelled but in practice I wonder what her engagement in school will be like if her parents are so foolish.

...in fact should they have been expelled?

To defend multiculturalism, Michaela had to cope with bomb threats. A teacher was threatened using Ku Klux Klan ‘terminology’ and other obscenity too rude to mention. The children were frightened.

Bricks and bottles were thrown. Teachers needed bodyguards. The police had to check the school for explosives before it opened.

Brave lot, the Michaela crew. They deserve an award for courage to support freedom.

As some people have said, the issue was obstensibly about pupils being allowed to prayer in the playground - but in reality less observant children were being bullied by other more devout members of their faith. And a teacher was attacked.

Katharine Birbalsingh issued a statement following the ruling. It's fairly length but worth a read. It explains a lot about the background to the school and why it has the policies it does. Her school is one of the few places that multiculturalism actually works - for well considered reasons. Despite what politicians like to think, most mixed communities aren't multicultural - they're just parallel communities with little interaction. Say what you like about KB, she's one of the few success stories of multicultural Britain and a beacon of educational excellence.

The point is thatbthe Muslim majority in the school were integrating. The minority weren't, and were causing huge problems for the school and the Muslim children attending as a result. If you don't like the rules, go elsewhere and leave a place at the highly successful and oversubscribed school to someone who does.

Perhaps you all need to evaluate why you find this so objectionable. If a school was in an area in which a large proportion of students were Jewish and many wanted to observe a very important part of their religion, eg the sabbath, why not allow it? Would we be having this conversation?

I’ve been in this scenario twice. One was my school experience of going to a secular state school in what was then a very Jewish area of the city. This was in the 60’s. There were no kosher land lunches, assemblies were Christian. We celebrate Christian holidays . None of the Jewish boys wore Yarmulkes. The religious children went to instruction after school but the one concession to the faith was on the two holiest festivals, the school shut because there was no point keeping open for about 10 kids. Apart from that we went in, did our work, ate our lunch , played out, did more work and went home. None of us observing important parts of our religion. All of us getting an education.

The second was when I worked at a primary school where two kids in my class were not Muslim. Muslim pupils were a large majority. We had Eid themed lessons and each child came to the front of the class to tell everyone what they did and their favourite present. There was a lot of focus on religion despite it being a secular school, which I thought was unbalanced especially as there was a mosque about 1 minute away. But there was no prayer area, no observing other rituals etc.

lol I literally said in my original post Muslim kids often don’t want to drink etc. does often mean all Muslims??? Can you comprehend. You literally proved my point by saying devout Muslims should go to a faith school. My point is they shouldn’t have to and that they get accused of isolating themselves when it’s a two way street.

Do you think Muslims praying in school is a new thing? I went to a very well known private girls school in London and 24 years ago was given a small room to pray in every lunch time when I asked. They also did a Muslim, Christian and Jewish assembly every week for those who wished to attend and they also held special assemblies/prayers for other religious groups. It’s called respecting peoples beliefs. It didn’t encroach on anyone else. It’s not that deep.

My husband went to an inner city comprehensive and also got space to pray 20 years ago. And this was in the peak of Islamaphobia with 9/11 and the Iraq war. 20% of the world are Muslim and we live in a global economy. It’s not new for some of those Muslims to ask to pray. It’s part of their day. It’s not ‘preparing students for the real world’ to restrict these things.

Surely you must see that a faith school for a devout Muslim is a far better choice for them.

We can’t accommodate every faith under the sun during the school day. How is that unreasonable?

many of my Muslim friends do too what’s your point. My point is that for those who may be conservative everyone who on the one hand tells them to integrate but on the other tells them to go to a faith school and not be part of society.

Saying all Muslims hate partying and their white friends won’t like them is racist.

Its not okay.

You should spend more time challenging such comments, and bias rather than posting it’s okay to be racist.

No one speaks for ALL Muslims. Some of my most lively and lovely friends were born Muslim. It’s wrong to make such broad, inaccurate assumptions.

Have RTFT and it's an interesting debate all round, often verging on the circular, but we humans are like that.

A bigger picture observation - there is currently a real uptick in the "spiritual battle" for our souls worldwide. Many faiths are claiming persecution, and in the US some of the evangelicals are actively praying that the Middle East will erupt because Jesus will return.

I'm on the woo side myself (the accessories are cooler 😉) so I'm going straight to the hell I don't believe in, and I've had some local fundies almost salivating in glee at the prospect.

I'm baffled how something we have precious little concrete evidence of drives so much hate and turmoil on the off chance that one has backed the right beardy Big Daddy. Or why we need the approval of such to be decent humans (or else).

I mean, it is all bonkers really, isn't it?

And if Holy War is an objective as we self fulfill ourselves into the end times it's going to be a bumpy ride. I'm opting out.

So the children weren't TOLERANT of other Muslim children's desire to not be as devout and so BULLIED the other children and RACIALLY ABUSED a teacher hardly an advertisement for their cause. Is this what devout religion produces?

I wouldn't send my son there, it would be a bit full-on for him.
But the head gets results!

God, i loathe religion.

It should be wiped off the face of the earth.

There's absolutely nothing else that perpetually causes so much aggro to humans, globally.

War, genocide, the fight for land/resources, and Christ knows what else.

So we should stop doing something because a minority of people make threats about it. We should not be chaning policy because a small number of bullies want it to happen.

Oh dear.

What a shame.

Never mind . . .

You have every right to find @Custardcream84 's comment "quite racist and distasteful".

And @Custardcream84 has an equal right to her opinion.

This is what integration and acceptance involves. Knowing that not everyone has the same views as yourself, but respecting their right to have them, and to voice them.

Also this was argued by Jason Coppel I think who is a very smart guy; say what you like about the head but she knows how to pick a good barrister. I wouldn't send my child to Michaela, but it's fair the head runs the place as her school with her ethos. That should not be some sort of left right issue. Other schools will have a different way of managing religious needs at their discretion. This is reasonable for them too.

Having read the judgment, my main takeaway is that Michaela sounds like some kind of dystopian nightmare! The level of control is hideous!

Religion does not and should never trump the right of children to have a broad and inclusive education.

That right is protected and enshrined in law - and all children should have unfettered access to education without the constant interruption and interference of prayer time.

This can be achieved outside of school hours if desired.