Teen Delights in British Court’s Backing in Case Over Islamic Dress

A Muslim orphan who won a two-year legal battle over a school dress code that prevented her from wearing an ankle-length garment says she has struck a blow against “prejudice and bigotry.”

In an interview Thursday in the Guardian newspaper a day after her court victory, 16-year-old Shabina Begum, originally from Bangladesh, said she hoped her case had given “hope and strength to other Muslim women.... I’m happy that I did this.”

But some critics fear that permitting more conservative Islamic dress in British schools could put pressure on Muslim girls to wear the same clothing or risk being branded as not devout.

The Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that Denbigh High School had not taken into consideration Begum’s religious freedom under the Human Rights Act. The statute was passed five years ago to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into British law.

The court directed the Education Department to issue guidelines on how schools’ dress codes could be brought into compliance with the law.

Begum’s former school denied her access to classes when she insisted on wearing a floor-length Arab gown known as a jilbab, which was not considered an acceptable variant of the school uniform.

A resident of Luton, about 25 miles north of London, Begum contended that the jilbab should be allowed because it was an expression of her faith.

The school’s policy permits girls to wear head scarves, or hijab, and a tunic worn over trousers, known as the shalwar kameez, a South Asian dress.

Begum was represented in court by Cherie Booth, the wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a case paid for by the government’s legal aid service. Begum said the uniform denied her the right to receive an education while manifesting her religious beliefs.

Begum, who has lived with an adult brother and sister since the death of their mother three years ago, has embraced a conservative interpretation of the modest attire enjoined by the Koran. She told the Guardian that her fight reflected the return to religion by many Muslim youths in Britain.

“I hope, in years to come, policymakers will take note of a growing number of young Muslims who, like me, have turned back to our faith after years of being taught that we needed to be liberated from it,” she said.

“Our belief in our faith is the one thing that makes sense of a world gone mad, a world where Muslim women, from Uzbekistan to Turkey, are feeling the brunt of policies guided by Western governments,” she added. “Both France and Britain are calling for freedom and democracy, but something as simple as the jilbab still takes two years to get OKd.”

Begum could not be reached Thursday for additional comment.

The court decision contained some ambiguity. Lord Justice Henry Brooke said that Britain’s Education Department must consider the rights of students under the Human Rights Act before imposing dress codes, but that the decision did not mean that all school uniform rules were necessarily banned.

In the case of Denbigh High School, where 79% of the students are Muslim, the court said there was no indication that authorities properly evaluated Begum’s religious beliefs before issuing the ruling that she could not attend classes in her preferred garb.

After being barred from the school in September 2002, Begum studied at home, and has since enrolled in another secondary school that lets her wear the jilbab.

The Muslim Council of Britain welcomed the court’s decision, saying, “This is a very important ruling on the issue of personal freedoms.”

But British Muslims were not all in favor of the ruling.

“This may be a victory for human rights, but it is also a victory for fundamentalism,” Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, told the Daily Telegraph.

Among the reasons cited by critics and the school for not allowing the jilbab was that other Muslim girls might feel pressured to wear it, and it might be associated with extremism which could threaten non-Muslims.

There also were suggestions that Begum and her brother had come under the influence of radical groups. “Every word that this Muslim schoolgirl spouted smacked more of politics than true religious feeling,” the conservative Daily Telegraph said in an editorial Thursday.

Britain, with a Muslim population of 1.6 million, mainly of South Asian descent, has avoided some of the cultural clashes that have rocked France, where the wearing of Islamic dress has been far more controversial.

France has Europe’s largest Muslim population: 5 million. This school year, a ban on Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large crosses took effect under a statute that outlaws the display of prominent religious symbols in public schools.

Officials said the intent of the law was to preserve France’s secular traditions from rising religious extremism.