This article on the Muslim prayer ban at Michaela school is written by Majid Iqbal, CEO of the Islamophobia Response Unit. It originally appeared in the Byline Times.
Last year, a Muslim pupil decided to challenge the prayer ban at Michaela school, arguing that it indirectly discriminated against the school’s Muslim cohort, which makes up around 50% of its 700 students.
Some right-wing commentators celebrated the prayer ban. Some also praised headteacher Katherine Birbalsingh for imposing it.
The pupil’s case was, from the beginning, a very narrow one.
Although Muslims are required to pray five times per day, she accepted that strict school rules meant that she would not be able to fulfil this obligation.
Nevertheless, she argued that the ban on ritualistic prayer violated her right to religious belief under the European Convention on Human Rights, that it indirectly discriminated against Muslim pupils under the Equality Act of 2010 – and that it failed to have ‘due regard’ to the need to eliminate discrimination, also under the Equality Act.
In the end, the court surprisingly rejected all three of the pupil’s claims, essentially on the basis that she could, if she chose to, attend a different school that did not hinder her religious practices.
Prayer ban at Michaela school was not ‘impliedly accepted’
The court said that the pupil “at the very least impliedly accepted, when she enrolled at the school, that she would be subject to restrictions on her ability to manifest her religion”.
However, this was a strange argument to make considering that court documents show that the ban was imposed after the girl enrolled at the school.
Michaela Community School’s well-documented strict behavioural regime is so unique to that institution that other schools in England and Wales simply could not rely upon it to deny prayer facilities to their pupils.
The High Court heard an abundance of evidence detailing the strict policies that provided the context that made the prayer ban possible.
Michaela secular school’s draconian regimes
To give just a few examples, pupils are required to move around the school’s building, and enter and exit all rooms, in a single-file formation.
Michaela Community School also maintains a ‘rule of four no more’, which means that pupils are not permitted to socialise in groups of more than four.
Lunch break is set at a rigid 25 minutes, and pupils are not allowed to move freely around the school premises during this time.
Constraints on space mean that pupils are not able to move to their next lesson at once, so that the start and end times of each lesson are staggered on a minute-by-minute basis, with movement around the school being heavily coordinated.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of what can quite comfortably be described as draconian behavioural regulations.
Time to pray ‘impossible’ in strict secular regimen
Given these rigid demands on pupils’ time and movements, it is not difficult to see how finding time to engage in group-based, ritualistic prayer at specific times throughout the day – as is required by Islamic precepts – becomes very difficult, if not impossible.
The school contends that these rules are the beating heart of the school’s ethos. This point matters greatly because, if the court had ruled in favour of the girl who brought the case, this would have meant the removal of the prayer ban.
Such a decision would have caused widespread disruption to the school’s rigorous – and, some might argue, excessive – behavioural codes of conduct.
Muslim students needing to pray would have to violate Birbalsingh’s policies aimed at regimenting students’ movement around the school.
Michaela school court decision is not a ‘landmark’
The court took all of this into consideration and the judgment’s balance tipped in favour of the school.
However, nowhere else in Britain are you likely to find another case of this nature.
It is therefore not a ‘landmark’ case because the deciding factor largely came down to the history of Michaela Community School’s uniquely austere rules.
Rather than standing as an example for others to draw upon in order to ban prayer facilities, this case and this school stand very much alone.
Read the original article in the Byline Times.