A High Court judge has been accused of Islamophobia by an accredited human rights campaign group after ruling that a school could lawfully prohibit its pupils from performing prayer rituals on its premises.
Mr Justice Linden dismissed a challenge brought on behalf of an unnamed Muslim student at Michaela Community School in north-west London who wanted to perform one of her five daily prayers during what she regarded as her lunch break.
The school, which is heavily oversubscribed, is a secular secondary free school for girls and boys with exceptionally strict rules — required in part because it is located in an unsuitable seven-storey office block. Around half the 700 pupils are Muslims.
Katharine Birbalsingh, the school’s founder and head teacher, had told its governing body that the decision to ban prayer rituals last year was not taken lightly:
Unacceptable segregation or division, contrary to the whole ethos of the school, was taking place as a result of permitting prayer. An intimidatory atmosphere was developing. Our strict disciplinary policies, on which the ethos and great success of school is based, were at risk of being undermined.
After recording in some detail how the school had achieved its exceptional academic success, Linden concluded that its prayer ritual policy
did not breach the student’s freedom to manifest her religious beliefs, protected by article 9 of the human rights convention. The judge said she had chosen the school knowing of its strict regime; she was able to move to a suitable school which would allow her to pray at lunchtime; and in any event she was able to perform qada prayers in order to mitigate the fact that she was not able to perform the dhuhr prayers at the allotted time.
did not indirectly discriminate against Muslim pupils, which would have been contrary to the Equality Act 2010, because its policy was justified as a “proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aims” of the school.
was not contrary to the school’s public sector equality duty because Michaela school had had due regard to the required equality issues.
The judge found that Birbalsingh had not acted unfairly in failing to ask the student for her version of events before excluding her for two days in March 2023. But the head teacher had acted unfairly in excluding the student for five days in April 2023 following an investigation in which the student was not asked for her account.
Islamophobia
A few hours after Linden’s 80-page judgment was handed down, a statement was issued by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), an independent campaign, research and advocacy group which is one of nearly 6,500 non-governmental organisations that have special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
In a statement headed School prayer ruling is exclusionary and Islamophobic, it said:
IHRC condemns today’s decision by a High Court that a school in north- west London was acting lawfully by preventing Muslim pupils from performing prayer on the premises…
The judge decided that because the pupil was aware of the “no prayer” policy when she applied to the school she had implicitly accepted the restrictions on observing her religion.
IHRC believes that the decision is discriminatory. It is another example of the Islamophobia that is running rampant in our institutions…
IHRC chair Massoud Shadjareh said: “The level of Islamophobia is astonishing. It has created a second-class citizenship for Muslims that denies them their fundamental right to practise their faith and subjects them to a secularising agenda of social engineering.”
Comment
The Islamic Human Rights Commission has described Linden’s decision as an example of Islamophobia. That is a serious allegation to make, particularly against someone with public responsibilities.
According to the United Nations,
Islamophobia is a fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world.
Motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that transcends into structural and cultural racism, it targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim.
Judges do not normally reply to such allegations. Instead, they encourage people to read their judgments and decide for themselves. Linden’s judgment is here and there is a short summary here.
There is also a very detailed report of the story at MailOnline, with a statement from the pupil and a full response from Birbalsingh.
Sadly, the IHRC understands nothing about the English language and is too lazy and complacent - aided and abetted by a cowardly government that is selling us down the river- to look up the word phobia
A phobia is an irrational fear. It is not irrational to see our country being turned into Yemen. It is reasonable to be terrified.
It went further than ‘stuff happens’. See paras 107-9