The umpteenth battle of the veil in Europe has ended with the victory of Shaima, a seven-year-old Moroccan girl
(by Paola Del Vecchio) (ANSAmed)
The education council of the regional government of Catalonia has forced a state school in Girona to admit the young girl to participate in lessons. The girl, who refused to remove her veil, had been missing school for over a week. The mother, Noama, affirms that the decision to wear the hidjab, the scarf which leaves the face uncovered, is not due to family pressures. “Shaima did everything alone,” she says in one of many interviews, “the child has grown up until last year in Morocco with the paternal grandmother, from whom she took her religious habits.”
The woman expressed her satisfaction for the intervention of the regional government, just when Shaimà s father “had decided to send her back to Morocco”, so that she could attend school in her country of origin. Shaima, backed by her family, categorically refused to comply with the request of the school’s director, Llorenc Carreras, to relinquish her veil, “incompatible with the school’s internal regulations”, under which “there cannot be any difference among the pupils, due to religious motives, sex, or any other reason”. But the director of the regional education council, Andreu Otero, in a statement to the media, remarked “that the school’s regulation cannot contradict the directions imposed by the regional government” which “forbid any discrimination for the school’s attendance”. While underlining that the child wears the veil of her own accord, Otero stated that “Spain is a non-confessional state” and has the duty “to tolerate and respect” the use of the Muslim veil.
The case of Shaima obviously reopened in Spain the debate on the tolerance towards religious habits in school institutions, where the second generation of the community of over 600,000 Muslims who are estimated to live in the country, is present. Allowing Muslim girls to wear the veil or a long skirt during sports lessons or even to allow fasting, with the subsequent risks of hypoglycemia during Ramadan, are issues to which there is no single answer.
http://www.ansamed.info/en/news/ME03.YAM18041.html