A Muslim girl prevented from praying took Michaela Community School to court. The High Court, last Tuesday, ruled in favour of the school’s right to decide to ban prayer for all pupils. [1]
Trip down memory lane
My own prayer experience at school
I remember when I was at college, we were not given a permanent room so we would utilise any room that was free. This carried on for many months.
One day after class, during the winter, around ten of us prayed Maghrib in congregation.
As we were praying, we heard a door open. Maybe someone had heard us and was about to join? Until we could hear raised voices, tables being moved, and our bags being carried out from the room by security guards.
We had nearly finished praying but the two security guards also decided to switch off the lights.
Our young selves, as we concluded the prayer, were unsurprisingly angry and fearless. I went outside, collected my bag, and proceeded to follow the main security guard behind the disruption.
Of course, it was quite reckless in hindsight, but I walked up to this guard — who was bigger and stronger than I was — and shouted,
“What the Hell do you think you are doing?!”
He turned to me and responded,
“I’m gonna make your life a living Hell!”
Alas, the other Muslims I was with chastised me for “making matters worse”.
But I was so angry that those security guards had done that.
After all, there was an unspoken permission that we could pray. And we would always make sure we left the classroom straight after. There would never be any signs we were even there!
A formal complaint ended our troubles
After all this happened, we lodged a complaint with the school council.
And a few days later, that very same security guard approached me to apologise. Thereafter, we were able to pray unencumbered.
You know, back in college was a teacher that we knew had problems with Muslims publicly expressing their Islam. When we would speak to him, he never held back on how much he felt Muslims were regressive and would never amount to anything as long as we stopped everything to pray five times a day.
That is why when I heard about Michaela Community School banning the prayer and being backed in doing so by the High Court, it brought back memories.
Dismantling myths surrounding this court ruling
There has already been much discussion in the Muslim community about this decision and what it means for us and our children.
At the same time, some things need to be clarified or revisited, so here are some of the biggest myths and the actual truth of the matter.
Katherine Birbalsingh is an ordinary head seeking to deliver quality education to underprivileged kids
Katherine Birbalsingh first came to prominence when she addressed the Tory party conference in 2010, decrying woke culture before it was a thing, to rapturous applause. [2]
As a result of her speech, she says she was driven from her school, where she was Deputy Headteacher.
However, soon after, the Tories presented her with her very own fiefdom, the free (taxpayer) gift of a free school from Michael “Gaza is not occupied” Gove.
When it was established in 2014, Suella “Israel is a beacon of democracy” Braverman was its founding Chair of Governors.
Furthermore, the school’s previous directors include Calvin “Islam does not align with British values” Robinson and Tony “Institutional racism does not exist in Britain” Sewell.
Michaela Community School is no ordinary school.
And Katherine Birbalsingh is not an average headteacher.
She carries a lot of “baggage”
When she quit (or rather, was pushed out of) her role as the government’s social mobility tsar in 2023, she admitted the reasons why.
“The simple answer is that I come with too much baggage.
“Over this past year, I have become increasingly aware that my propensity to voice opinions that are considered controversial puts the commission in jeopardy.” [3]
She does have a lot of baggage and besides her controversial statements are her links, not to the Conservative Party but the neocon elements that have dragged the party to the edge of electoral oblivion.
Buddies with Braverman and Gove
Birbalsingh is a Marxist-turned-conservative. She says she’s a small-c one, but her alignment with the likes of Gove and Braverman suggests otherwise.
When Prime Minister, David Cameron demoted Michael Gove from Education Secretary to the whip’s office; Birbalsingh rushed to his defence. At the time, Cameron was warned that Gove was toxic, and he’d been rightly trying to move him on for over a year.
Nevertheless, Birbalsingh warned that Cameron was at risk of becoming a killer (of school reform), as:
“…the man who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.” [4]
This defence was unsurprising.
Had it not been for Michael Gove’s free school programme, Birbalsingh would not have become a headteacher. She was repaying the favour not to the Conservative Party, but the neocons to whom she owes fealty, those same people who have turned the party far to the right of British politics.
Lauded by the far-right
She plays to an audience that sees her fighting the good fight, a culture war, a war against woke, where Muslims are one step from taking over. Just look at the responses to this saga on X, the far-right have hailed her victory as a blow against Islam.
It is very clear, that she appeals to an audience that can no longer be racist, but can cling to hatred of Muslims as the last acceptable vestige of prejudice.
In that sense, she holds many parallels to Suella and the Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch, as all three represent the types of brown people that can say what their White colleagues cannot.
And then their White colleagues can be given cover to assert that racism no longer exists, that the British Empire was a force for good, and all sorts of other statements that communicate what they, as White Tories, cannot say.
For example, in 2019, Birbalsingh tweeted,
“If a child says [the] teacher is being racist, back the teacher.
“Whatever the child says, back the teacher. If you don’t, you are letting the child down and allowing them to play you for a fool.” [5]
…because a teacher is less likely to be racist than a non-White child is likely to be making up racist behaviour towards them.
She uses race when it suits her
When she had an altercation on X with Jess Phillips MP, she complained to Keir Starmer that she was a victim of racism.
Initially, she claimed Jess Phillips had said,
“You ain’t no Asian.”
Phillips had, in fact, said — while referring to the Saviour lion in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
“You ain’t no Aslan.”
When Birbalsingh was informed that the first version was not what Phillips said, rather than taking personal responsibility as she claims to instil at Michaela, she blamed it on a poor quality screenshot!
The bottom line is she has ideological baggage and associations that explain her ideological leanings and antagonism towards the Islamic prayer.
She has sought to create a school to prove that the left have destroyed modern schooling. The right look upon the school as a blueprint for what schools should be.
This judgment sets a precedent for other schools to discriminate against Muslim children
Despite the judgment, this is not a precedent-setting one.
The judgment relates to a specific school that opted to ban the Muslim prayer and proceeded to fight its discriminatory policy in the courts, because of an ideological dislike.
There is no school like Michaela; it’s an army camp
Children must stand in a particular way, walk in a particular way; if they don’t, they are punished. When children enter the school in Year 7, they go though a boot camp which sets expected behaviours to the level of robots.
Then, there’s the fabric of the school
As a converted office block, it has narrow corridors and a staircase which has a strict one-way system.
It can argue that even if they wanted to allow the prayer, which they don’t, they aren’t able to facilitate it.
Pupils are not permitted to…
- Talk in the corridors
- Sit with their friends at lunchtime
- Carry any personal items not sanctioned by the school
- Congregate in groups of more than four, including in the school yard
- Wear coats, even in winter, when they have to go outside in the cold. [6]
Sure, why would coats not be anything but “non-essential” in any case? [6]
Pupils are ordered to…
- End every interaction with a teacher with either “Sir” or “Miss”
- Chant poetry by memory before sitting down to lunch
- Take part in conversations with the group they are assigned to sit with at lunch and which is supervised by a teacher
- Sing the national anthem twice a week
- Be supervised during breaks and going to the toilets, with teachers strategically placed in corridors and outside toilets. [6]
In addition, behaviour is regulated through a merits and demerits system. [6]
Collective punishment through lunch
In 2016, the school was criticised for placing children, whose parents failed to pay for lunch, in isolation.
This effectively meant punishing children for the failings of their parents. This is a form of collective punishment, is it not? [7]
The school can claim that the constraints of its site and its unique and strict ethos do not allow prayer to be integrated into its school day, but other schools cannot claim the same.
Michaela is a secular school, so it shouldn’t change the rules for Muslim children
The reality is that a secular school in England is a myth.
All schools must provide a daily act of collective worship. This should be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character. But a school can request a “determination”, if their school has a clearly defined non-Christian religious community. [8]
Michaela School is bound by this. So when the school declared itself to be secular, as did the judge, this claim was and remains entirely misleading.
If a school banned religion from its premises, it would be effectively breaking the law.
Certain expression of religion banned, not religion itself
It is not religion that is prohibited in the school, but a particular expression of it.
For example, the school does allow Muslim girls to wear a headscarf, or for Muslims to fast. It also serves a vegetarian meal at lunch, which it calls “family meals”, and it doesn’t serve pork for religious reasons. This all suggests that the school is capable of making accommodations, and does so on religious grounds.
But the problem is the school justifies having banned prayer, because it claims it was threatening its ethos.
It claims children were talking other children into prayer. Let’s accept that this were the case. The school also argued that some Muslim girls were strong-arming other Muslim girls into wearing the headscarf. But the school didn’t ban the headscarf.
You can balance school ethos with reasonable pupil requests
The school’s response was unreasonable and did discriminate against Muslim children, although the court ruled it didn’t.
Birbalsingh claims the school makes decisions in the interest of the entire school community that affect specific groups of children. She argues that sometimes children have to attend school on an odd Sunday for exam prep, and that prevents Christian children from attending Church — something which is not a tenet of the Christian faith.
She says that the school teaches about magic and witches in Macbeth, which offends parents who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, but they have to accept the school’s decision for the greater good.
A parent may have complained about their children learning about witches and magic, but to place the banning of Muslim prayer and the dislike of Macbeth by Jehovah’s Witnesses on the same level is disingenuous. They are not the same.
If they were, the Jehovah’s Witnesses website wouldn’t have multiple, positive quotes from the Scottish play (Macbeth). [9] [10]
Islamic prayer in terms of a duty is an unparalleled practice
As part of the school’s case, it argued and the court accepted that Islam has a mechanism to make up prayers that are missed. The school provided no authoritative backing that this mechanism was an absolute, rather than an exceptional tool.
In actual fact, the claimant (i.e. the Muslim student and her mother) sought and received a witness statement from Professor Mona Siddiqui, someone not known to espouse a “traditional” or “normative” Islamic perspective.
She said,
“The dominant view is that qada prayers are prayers which compensate for prayers which have been missed owing to forgetfulness or oversleeping, not prayers which have been deliberately not observed.
“Therefore, qada should not be regarded as an alternative practice to missed prayers.
“For some scholars, if one missed a prayer deliberately, that prayer could never be made up by qada. Rather, the person should seek God’s forgiveness and repent.” [1]
But the court ignored this as immaterial to the decision by the school to not accommodate the prayer.
Mr. Justice Linden said,
“Islam permits the Claimant to make up for missing Duhr by performing Qada prayers later in the day and, even if this were not so, she chose a secular school which she knew to have a strict behavioural regime and she is free to transfer to a school which would permit her to pray if she wishes to do so.
“The School argues that any interference with the Claimant’s religious freedom is in any event justified, as is any indirectly discriminatory effect of the Prayer Ritual Policy itself, principally because the performance of ritual prayer would conflict with the School’s ethos and its behavioural rules, and because the practicalities of pupils doing so mean that it cannot be accommodated by the School.” [1]
Parents should’ve known before applying that the school does not allow prayer
The school argued that the mother,
“…chose a secular school which she knew to have a strict behavioural regime and she is free to transfer to a school which would permit her to pray if she wishes to do so.” [1]
This is something which many Muslim parents hear from headteachers when they raise a reasonable objection:
“If you don’t like it here, why don’t you go to an Islamic school?”
It is an echo of,
“Go back to your own country.”
Many problems with assuming it’s clear the school doesn’t allow prayer
- How does the school clarify its position on prayer?
The school argues that it made this clear during the application process.
As the claimant’s child was on the waiting list, she didn’t join the school in September, but only when a place opened up later in the school year. And she naturally didn’t attend any of the open days or the welcome days.
- The school seems to believe that just because it’s strict, the parent would be able to deduce that prayer would not be allowed.
But the two don’t follow.
- The parent was aware that there was no prayer room.
However, the lack of a prayer room does not in and of itself clarify whether prayer would be allowed or not.
The converted office block was ill-equipped to be a school, so understandably the existence of a fixed prayer room would be difficult.
- If prayer were an issue, why was prayer in the playground initially allowed?
If the school had a clear ban on prayer, why was it not banned until March 2023 and then banned in its Prayer Ritual Policy in May 2023?
Up to this day, 24 April 2024, the Prayer Ritual Policy (PRP) is not on the school’s website. Nor is there a single document clarifying that prayer is banned.
There may be internal documents which include this message, or the school may still be relying on verbal communication, but how important is a policy that doesn’t even appear on its website?
Lots of Muslim parents are happy with the school, a small minority are not
Tip of the iceberg
The school has sought to downplay the issue by characterising opposition by one parent out of hundreds.
Even if that were the case, why shouldn’t a parent call out a clear case of discriminatory practice by a taxpayer-funded school?
But the reality is the disquiet is not restricted to a minority. In every cause throughout history, the minority have always represented a greater number than those who chose to act. It’s like arguing that those active in the civil rights movement in the US, especially in its earliest stages, were a small minority. Or those who fought apartheid in South Africa, or women in this very country that fought for the vote. Numbers don’t represent the truth.
This is often a highly political tactic which some schools employ to characterise a “demanding” parent as a troublemaker, as opposed to the meek, quietist parents who are the salt of the Earth.
Harkening back to days of colonial rule
The above is reminiscent of the tactics of the colonial masters, who not only saw their role as civilising the savages but also portrayed themselves and every decision they took as intrinsically benevolent.
Indeed, they demonised anyone who opposed them and sought to build a native population beholden to and loyal to them.
But the reality is, the school banned the prayer because of the numbers of children taking part, not because a minority were praying. Had it only been a single child praying, the school would not have banned the prayer.
The school banned prayer rituals for all children; it didn’t target Muslim children
In law, when a school makes a decision, that applies to all pupils equally, but if it disproportionately affects a certain group with a protected characteristic, that’s textbook indirect discrimination.
Yet, in this instance the court argued the policy was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.
The court balanced the impact on Muslim pupils set against what the school claimed to be trying to achieve for the whole school community. It found in favour of the school. The court also found that the school saw Muslim prayer as a threat to social cohesion and the ethos of the school. They also accepted that prayer could not be practicably facilitated.
The reality is, no matter the explanation, Muslim children were targeted, because no other pupils were prevented from fulfilling their religious obligations. The latter point was acknowledged by the court.
Just because the court found in favour of the school, it doesn’t lessen the very clear discriminative approach of the school.
Children can always make up their prayers after school, Imams okayed this
What did London Central Mosque say?
One of the intriguing details which came out in the trial was Birbalsingh’s claims that she had approached Imams at London Central Mosque, to confirm that pupils could make up the prayer after school.
London Central Mosque confirmed in a statement that it intervened to mediate between a parent and the school in June 2023 (after the ban), but that the headteacher was adamant that pupils would not be allowed to pray in the school.
The masjid said it had clarified that prayer could not be delayed. The headteacher assured the masjid that she would see to it that the civic centre across from the school would provide a space for its pupils to pray. [11]
Has the court been deliberately misled?
This point on utilising a nearby civic centre was only a partial resolution, and it appears that it was never followed up.
So, on top of it all, it seems like the court may have been misled by a false statement!
If that is the case, this could be deemed contempt of court. [11]
Final points of note
DfE suggests supporting Muslim students to pray at the required time
Schools have a legal responsibility to fulfil their equality duties, this is set out in the Public Sector Equality Duty.
The Department for Education’s guidance (DfE) on the Equality Act 2010 sets out what advancing equality means.
One of these meanings is:
“…taking steps to meet the particular needs of people who have a particular
characteristic (for example: enabling Muslim pupils to pray at prescribed times);” [12]
In the very guidance the DfE wrote, in relation to a school’s equality duties, it specifically gave the example of enabling Muslim pupils to pray at prescribed times as an example of advancing equality of opportunity!
But when the very Education Secretary who oversees the department that wrote that guidance responded on X following the court’s judgment, all she could say is:
“I have always been clear that headteachers are best placed to make decisions in their school.
“Michaela is an outstanding school, and I hope this judgment gives all school leaders the confidence to make the right decisions for their pupils.” [13]
The last acceptable kind of prejudice
We live in an age where the law, as it stands, is often ignored in pursuit of feeding the culture war, practising the last acceptable form of prejudice and advancing ideological positions.
It’s interesting that vast sections of the far-right are celebrating this as a Battle of Vienna moment. The Muslim hordes have been pushed back!
This school has won plaudits from vast swathes of the far-right that advance replacement theory. But it’s not only the far-right rubbing their hands with glee.
News outlets struggling to contain their ecstasy
Fraser Nelson, Editor at the Spectator, hyperbolically framed the court case (before the verdict was announced) as,
“…a battle for the future of Britain.” [14]
Stephen Pollard, the former Editor of the Jewish Chronicle — under whose tenure the toothless former press regulator, the PCC, and its equally toothless successor, IPSO, made 14 rulings against the paper — also got in on the act.
Any other man would hang his head in shame and quietly move away from public life. But no, if Stephen is on one side of the argument, you know the other side must have great merit.
Stephen, writing in the newspaper that has become a home to a broad range of deranged Islamophobes, the Express, wrote an article titled London school banned Muslim prayer shows silent majority will win the day, with nothing new to add but recycled statements from the school and his own Zionist complaints against opposition to genocide, his hatred of the term “Islamophobia”, yadda yadda yadda! [15]
Birbalsingh herself chose the rightwing Spectator magazine to gloat about the court’s backing of her prayer ban. [16]
Even the leftwing/Labour-right publication, the New Statesman, called the prayer ban:
“…a victory for tolerance.” [17]
Stop thinking we are second-class citizens!
The final message to Muslim parents is, we must no longer believe we are second-class citizens, no matter how much sections of British society seek to portray you as a fifth column, seeking to infiltrate public institutions, conspiring against “British values”.
You have every right to raise your voice and utilise the same tools as other British citizens. There are many haters who want nothing more than to silence you. If you comply, you are consigning yourself to second-class citizenship status.
The mother and daughter who brought the case, they showed resilience and bravery. They ought to be commended and supported. Far too many parents withdraw from difficult challenges for want of an easy life. This Muslim mother didn’t. May Allah (subḥānahu wa ta’āla) reward her for taking a stand.
British courts remain biased against us
A word of caution: we mustn’t see the British judiciary as the saviour of our rights. It is still tainted by the same prejudices against Muslims that have become normalised in our society.
Therefore, we must ensure that we explore all options first and think and act strategically. Where the case is an individual one, and the judgment doesn’t affect other Muslims, we can decide on a course of action we are content with (although it’s still better to seek advice).
But when the issue has the potential to affect our community, we have an obligation to seek advice from our mashāikh, leaders, and legal experts. This ensures that we look beyond issues from a single perspective, but much more strategically.
Do not be pessimistic
And to those Muslims who are spreading messages of doom and gloom about schools banning the prayer, I say this:
These messages are incredibly disempowering and very unhelpful. But most importantly, they scaremonger about a reality that won’t happen, inshāAllah.
Will the headteacher who has allowed Muslim pupils to pray suddenly decide not to? No, whilst those schools that already ban the Muslim prayer will feel vindicated. They will carry on as they were. For some of them, this is a matter of creed.
We must vote with our feet
Why are Muslim parents still sending their children to schools like Michaela? Schools which prohibit Muslims from fulfilling the second pillar, an act which is a fundamental duty to our Creator and Sustainer?
The moment we refuse to support these schools is the moment these schools will suddenly decide that these discriminatory policies are untenable.
But if we prioritise educational attainment over and above our primary purpose in life, we will reap what we sow. We will have raised children who are immensely qualified in their respective fields but are either “culturally Muslim” or have left Islam altogether.
May Allah (subḥānahu wa ta’āla) save us from that!
Action points
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Do not rush to conclusions, the government and media wish to scaremonger Muslims into submission.
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When considering schools for your child, seek clarity on whether they have a written prayer ritual policy.
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We need to consult legal experts and community leaders to strategise further steps to prevent this court ruling becoming something bigger.
Also read
Source: Islam21c
Notes
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XekkQ3HG2lg
[3] https://schoolsweek.co.uk/why-im-leaving-the-social-mobility-commission
[6] https://michaela.education/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Behaviour-Policy-September-2023.pdf
[9] https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/when-someone-dies/coping-with-grief
[10] https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101985284?q=macbeth&p=doc
[11] https://iccuk.org/2024/Statement_Michaela_School.pdf
[13] https://twitter.com/GillianKeegan/status/1780176244815831105
[14] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/18/trial-katharine-birbalsingh-battle-for-future-britain
[15] https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1891093/michaela-school-strictest-headteacher
[16] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-michaela-court-ruling-is-a-victory-for-all-schools
[17] https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/04/michaela-school-ban-prayer-ruling-katharine-birbalsingh
Great and informative article