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

[KTheGrey]

Apparently the mother involved wants to send her younger child to the school she finds so unsatisfactory in September. I don't think this is reasonable. I understand the logic of leaving a child at a school where they are established, but she should be expected to find a school she likes better for a younger sibling, surely.

She also intends to bring another suit, presumably tax payer funded again. I think that she should be expected to pay in full for any further suit she brings against the school. She could apply for costs if she wins.

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.

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.

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.

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.

...in fact should they have been expelled?

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.

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

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.

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.

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'.

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.

This is an interesting interview.
Peter's annoying, but KB is great.

The discussion around the legal challenge starts at 41:56.

I don't get the "why did you send your child to a religious/non-religious/school that teaches Martian?" arguments.

These schools are state-funded or assisted and tbh it's bad enough that certain groups get priority access to them when they're paid for by taxpayer money.

Where I live, almost all schools either have some religious denomination, are grammars or are single-sex. Some are all three. Anyone wanting their child to go to a mixed, secular comprehensive would have very little choice indeed.

And just because a school has a certain ethos (aggressively religious/secular, whatever) isn't a green light for it not to respect fundamental rights.

But that is the test. Because the obligation is to provide education. There is no legal right to educational choice based on your religious preference. The individual has a choice, but because of their personal religious belief, that choice may be a limited one. That would be because of the belief of the individual, not the actions of the state.

I'm wondering what the girl will do now she's back at that school. The way I see it she has a few choices:

• To defy her headteacher and other teachers and carry on practising her religion and forcing her beliefs onto other pupils and mocking/shunning/bully/intimidate pupils who aren't as devout as she is, or worse, racially abusing pupils/teachers and being violent towards them.

• To obey her headteacher and other teachers and practise her religion in private and not mock/shun/bully/intimidate pupils who aren't as devout as she is and to not racially abuse pupils and teacher and to not incite racial hatred.

• Re the first bullet point - she will have to decide whether she will appeal or not, funded by legal aid and encouraged to do so by imans/other more hardline Muslims.

I can appreciate that some Muslims (and other religions) aren't happy if more and more Muslims are getting less religious/devout and wish to practice their religion in a less devout way, they can see this could be dangerous in letting all sorts of practices happen within their community and with Muslims marrying out, having more freedom generally etc.

But, really, when you choose to live in a Westernised country whether it's here or another country, you are free to practice your religion, live within your culture and practices but there will always be temptations for members of your community. And, when you move to the West, presumably one of the reasons you are moving from a stricter religious/cultural country e.g. Iran or Saudi Arabia, is because you don't wish to live in a country with such harsh regimes, and you like the West for it's freedoms and education/work/living prospects. I know and worked with an Iranian solicitor who moved to England from Iran and married a French pharmacist, because he hated the strict regime in Iran. He said it was a beautiful country but rarely returned there. He liked the fact that he could drink a beer after work in our local pub and live a Western/Muslim life here and not face criticism for doing things such as drinking a beer.

You have the choice of sending your children to a school which is a faith school (of any religion) if you wish for their education to be religious and of the religion you follow, or you have the choice to send your child where their education is first and foremost and religion is secondary, and any practices you have, e.g. celebrating holidays or praying, is carried out outside the school.

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?

Perhaps you need to evaluate why this child's behaviour isn't objectionable to you. It should not be acceptable irregardless of the religion involved. She should have been expelled. Bullying and racial abuse (not to mention the intimidation outside of this that was carried out) to get what she wanted is hardly an advertisement for being devout and religious. She had no care for the rights or freedoms of the other children involved, nor the feelings of the teacher she abused. These are the actions of a despot.

The school Is secular, was advertised as such, and the parents have signed their children up to a secular school . The rule changes came in because the child decided to act/behave in the way that she did.

The requirements of the school are quite clear and open, and have now been reinforced by the outcome of this case. It is now irrelevant whether people agree with them or like them, if you don't like those rules then don't go to the school - it really is that simple. The school is oversubscribed and there are alternatives, no one is forced to go there and the 50% of the pupils who are Muslim appear to be quite happy with matters as they are.

This family have lost the case, that is the consequence of the risk they took. They are apparently considering suing the school again, but I would imagine the chance of them being granted legal aid for a case has been much reduced by this ruling. They would probably have to find their own funds which might reveal if there is a more orchestrated movement behind this action. They may also risk being declared vexatious litigants, time will tell if they are or not.

Well yes, but I'm not saying the state should provide an education in line with everyone's personal beliefs/preferences.

Just that the "why did you send your child to that school if you didn't agree with the ethos?" arguments are a bit pointless?

The answer will usually be because it was the only or at least the least worst option.

What is very interesting to me here about this child (and let's not forget that she is still technically a child) is that this child's behaviour was encouraged by adults in her life and started by them.

So, this behaviour was suggested to her by the iman who encouraged her to start praying with her fellow pupils in the carpark as an act of defiance towards the school and the headteacher and against it's rules and then her mother and presumably other pupil's parents' who encouraged them all to victimise other pupils and teachers.

I haven't read the whole document posted here yet, and I've got no idea what cases the CPS decided to bring against the parents involved, let alone against the children. But the adults should be charged with various crimes they committed, which is inciting racial hatred/violence etc. A child can be excused some of these crimes. This child could be undergoing radicalisation treatment which can be reversed with the correct treatment. I feel like Shamima Begum (I am not excusing her actions at all) and her friends may have gone down these routes or been tempted to do this, had they been in similar situations. We all know how we are tempted to behave as young, impressionable teenagers. This sort of behaviour needs to be nipped in the bud so it doesn't spill over into their university, college or working lives.

There needs to be talks within the Muslim community in Brent but also within the wider Muslim community to take about divisive behaviour generally. Yes, the more hardline Muslims will want to be divisive and will encourage this child and others like her, and their parents to cause waves and make trouble but this is not right and has unleashed a whole can of worms generally.

I'm no fan of Birbalsingh, but in this case, i think she was right. The rule was brought in after a number of students started praying in the playground, using their blazers as prayer mats. The 'no religious services, no prayer room' rule was already established. There was also pressure being put on other Muslim kids to join in the prayer sessions. So the school simply clarified their rule.

Hopefully this will allow other schools to start banning religion in their premises. No divisive symbols at all, no crosses, no hijabs, no kippahs. We wouldn't allow gang colours in schools so it's time to ban all outward displays of religion.

Agree. It's all very well hand wringing about how it came to pass that a child can take herself off to Syria to become impregnated several times by some random murderer she's been married off to and then have to spend the rest of her life in a prison camp, but this child is being radicalised openly by Imams ( funded in many cases by fundamentalists in Iran and Saudi Arabia) and her parents. That's how it comes to pass.

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

Where we lived there were two state primaries. My DBs went to one and because my parents weren’t happy with the standard of maths, English etc, sent me to the other which was CofE. My parents had zero issue with any of us singing hymns or having a part in the nativity etc. To them they were just songs and stories that didn’t affect them in any way. We had presents from Santa at Christmas as it was a nice thing for little kids. They had no animosity to any Christian beliefs or values. They were totally ambivalent.

I wanted to say as much but you did it more eloquence and did it more justice than I could have. I feel there are controlling factors in the background here and it 'looks' better coming from a female child and woman parent. Someone else is rolling the balls and they're firing them. Manipulation at its finest.

Yes, using a mother and female child to "convert" the secular school is really worrying. The bullying was horrendous. I am glad the Iman lost his case.