OfSTED’s recent declaration that
school inspectors should question Muslim girls who choose to wear Hijab strikes
a blow to the freedom of conscience that most in the UK enjoy. Freedom
of conscience was defined by the United Nations’ in the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights as everyone having the right to freedom of thought,
conscience and religion.
Much of the discussion over the
OfSTED Hijab story in the press and on social media has been around whether it
is a requirement for Muslim women to cover their hair or not. While I’m sure
that this is an important theological discussion for many Muslims to be having,
it falls short of the discussion that all of us should be having in response to
OfSTED’s decision. We should be talking about the legitimacy and value of the
State deciding if young women can freely express their culture while at school.
The recent targeting of young
Muslims by OfSTED and the Department for Education is not an isolated incident
and is the latest move in a secular crusade that has been waged on our schools
over the last few years by the likes of Michael Gove MP and Michael Wilshaw,
the previous head of OfSTED. This secular crusade gave us the ‘Trojan Horse’ ‘scandal’,
when schools in Birmingham were accused of having been taken over by so-called ‘Islamic
extremists’ in 2014. This resulted in OfSTED issuing advice that led to the
imposition of the PREVENT Counter-Terrorism Strategy on our schools. A strategy
that has been widely criticised for unfairly targeting Muslim pupils and for
stoking anti-Muslim sentiment.
The events that became known as
the ‘Trojan Horse’ focussed on schools in Birmingham and subsequently in Tower
Hamlets where I was working as a secondary school teacher at the time. These
were schools that served majority Muslim communities and where the students
gained better exam results than both OfSTED and the Department for Education
expected them to. Much of this success has been put down to the schools
respecting and valuing the cultures that children brought with them to school. In
a book chapter from 2006 titled ‘The Trojan Horse’, Gove does not see value in
the culture that Muslim children arrive at the school gates with. He describes
the existence of Islamic ideology in the UK as a ‘symbolic fight’ and questions
if the UK would be ‘strong enough to defend the idea of secular space’. Despite
Gove’s concern for ‘secular space’, schools in the UK are not secular. Whether Gove
and his fellow secularists like it or not, the UK is a religious state where
the law suggests that freedom of conscience (religious or secular) should be
respected.
The importance of respecting the
culture that children bring to school presents an alternative interpretation to
the events that became known as the ‘Trojan Horse’. This alternative view fits
better with my experience as a teacher in Tower Hamlets. Young girls who I have
worked with describe feeling welcome at school when their headscarf is allowed
as part of their school uniform and how this helps them feel comfortable which
in turn helps them to concentrate on their school work. Pupils who were offered
a classroom when they asked for somewhere to pray at lunchtime describe feeling
accepted and were more engaged in class. Similarly, a school where I previously
worked brought in players from the local football club, Arsenal, to help
motivate disenfranchised young white boys to learn to write. Ensuring that the
cultures that all children bring with them to school are respected is necessary
if they and their parents are to engage in their education and if our schools
are to serve all of our children.
I’m sure that the Amanda Spielman
(HM Chief Inspector of Education) who has advised schools inspectors to
question Hijab wearing girls is well-meaning but her instructions are likely to
do more harm than good. Quizzing young girls over the legitimacy of their
choice to wear a headscarf to school tells these girls that they do not belong.
Had Spielman spoken to some of the kids who I have taught, she would have heard
that there are many reasons for wearing a Hijab; considered theological
positions; fashion; I’m told that it’s quicker to put on a headscarf than to do
your hair in the morning and, yes,
because dressing modestly and wearing a Hijab keeps your Dad off your back,
often so that he lets you stay out later in the evening. If OfSTED’s move was
really about care for young Muslim women, these voices would be heard and
respected.
The liberal fetish for the headwear
of young Muslim girls is a textbook example of the contradictions of liberalism.
While discussing the West’s response to 9/11, Jacques Derrida warned that these contradictions result in the
‘autoimmunity’ of liberalism. He tells us that liberal aspirations tend to
backfire. Creating an institutional requirement that Muslim girls are questioned
about how they chose to dress is likely to make young people feel alienated
from their schools and teachers and may undermine much of the excellent work
that has previously been done to raise the academic standards for children from
minority communities as they are implicitly told by OfSTED that our schools are not for them.
