Category: Schools and Religion

Retired Dutch politician Frits Bolkestein says the poor quality of Muslim-operated Islamic schools in the Netherlands distance Muslims further from Dutch society.

He fears this may result in ethnic segregation, creating areas in the Netherlands where Shariah is the rule of law.

Bolkestein warns against Islamic schools “where boys and girls are segregated, where Holocaust history is not taught, where anti-Semitism is not combated, and where the curriculum militates against the emancipation of women.”

A 14-year-old’s nose piercing has landed her a suspension from school and forced her into the middle of a fight over her First Amendment right to exercise her religion.

Ariana Iacono has been suspended since last week because her nose ring violates the Johnston County school system’s dress code.

Iacono and her mother, Nikki, belong to the Church of Body Modification, a small group unfamiliar to rural North Carolina, but one with a clergy, a statement of beliefs and a formal process for accepting new members.

It’s enough to draw the interest of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which has contacted school officials with concerns that the rights of the Iaconos are being violated by the suspension.

The Iaconos say the school system is ignoring its own dress code policy, which allows exemptions on religious grounds.

A high school senior’s desire to build a Wiccan altar in shop class has forced a community debate about free expression.

Dale Halferty, who has taught industrial arts at Guthrie Center High School for three years, was placed on paid leave Monday after he acknowledged to district officials that he told the student he could not build the altar in class.

In what could eventually become a statewide precedent in California, a Riverside County judge has found no legal basis for a lawsuit brought on behalf of two girls kicked out of a Christian school for an alleged lesbian relationship.

In the UK, angry parents take a school to task for making children practice their handwriting by copying a Muslim prayer.

Teenager Lydia Playfoot today lost her High Court challenge over a ban preventing her from wearing a Christian “purity ring”.

The niqab left them utter strangers to me and their classmates, who simply forgot about them. The veil that those young women wore utterly isolated them. They sat in the classroom with us, but they weren’t part of the group. They were effectively invisible.