So here we are again. A nine-year-old girl from south London has been forbidden from wearing her hijab at school. As surely as night follows day, her family are suing the school for religious discrimination. Commentators on the Left, like the education journalist Susan Elkin, tie themselves in tautologies in efforts to call for toleration: “I know it’s hard for those of us who didn’t grow up in strict Muslim families to understand why it’s a sin for a child of nine to be bare headed in front of male teachers,” she concedes, “but would a uniform coloured headscarf really affect teaching and learning in the classroom?”
Which leads us to draw the inevitable comparison with the caseof Celestina Mba, the Christian Baptist who was sacked for refusing to work on Sundays. A High Court judge, Mr Justice Langstaff, upheld the decision to dismiss her. And, of course, the case of Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin, the two Christian women who claim that they were discriminated against when their employers barred them from wearing crosses at work. The Government positioned itself against the pair, stating that because wearing the cross is not a “requirement” of the Christian faith, wearing one in defiance of a ban can be a sackable offence. Or, as their lawyers pithily put it, Christians must “choose between their job and their faith”.
To take a semantic tack: it is generally recognised that there is an important difference between tolerance and toleration. The former usually denotes an acceptance of alternative ways of life, whereas the latter tends to mean putting up with something with which one disagrees. It is often said that one of our best qualities in this country is our live-and-let-live mentality, and for this reason it is counter-intuitive to make a qualitative judgment about other people’s beliefs. But as even Susan Elkin’s commendably open-minded article demonstrates, in these cases it is necessary, however awkward, to distinguish between these two terms.
The fact is that wearing a cross to work, or arranging one’s shifts so that one doesn’t have to work on Sundays, is wholly benign and understandable. Even from an atheist point of view, it would be deeply unreasonable to object to people expressing their faith in these ways. Nothing more than tolerance is called for.
For many people, however, holding the view that a nine-year-old girl must cover her head in the presence of men is more problematic. It may be a deeply held religious conviction for some, but from the outside it can seem very challenging. Personally, I tend to think that St Cyprian’s – the school in question – should not block the wearing of the hijab, so long as it is in school uniform colours. But from the school’s point of view, this would be an act of toleration, not tolerance. It could be argued that the requirement for a headscarf for a nine-year-old does not have immediate sexual overtones, but is simply establishing a habit for later life. Nevertheless, if the girl were older, it would be different. In our modern society, with such a stigma surrounding paedophilia, it can be perceived as a de facto accusation directed at males, particularly male teachers, to have parents seek to protect a nine-year-old child from their eyes in this way. So the hijab question is far more contentious than the Christian parallels mentioned above.
It is possible, therefore, to mount a reasonable defence of banning it in school. Sacking a Christian employee for expressing her faith in a modest and personal fashion, however, is indefensible, and the Government’s position on that issue is shameful.