Muslim group supports school for banning veils

London, Feb 7 (UNI) As the war over the veil rages in the UK, a Muslim group, in an unprecedented move, has offered to help fund a school's legal battle following its refusal to let a student wear the niqab.

The Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford (Meco) has written to the school to say ''it is prepared to contribute to a fighting fund''.

Meco's chairman Taj Hargey said he was also willing to organise a campaign among Muslims nationally to resist ''this largely Saudi-driven campaign to make the niqab a compulsory requirement for Muslim women''.

Dr Hargey's offer comes as the school, which cannot be identified because of a court order, faces the prospect of an expensive legal fight without any backing.

Buckinghamshire county council, the local authority for the school, is unwilling to underwrite a challenge which it believes could cost as much as 500,000 pounds.

A court is due to decide tomorrow whether the school's decision not to allow the student, aged 12, to wear the veil should go to a full judicial review. The school, which already allowed girls to wear hijabs, drew the line at niqabs, which covers the whole face except the eyes. It is insisting that the family accepts the uniform policy, but the father has been given legal aid to fight a human rights case.

Last year, it was ruled that a school in Luton, was justified in barring Shabina Begum from wearing a jilbab to classes after a long and expensive legal fight. The judges made clear that their ruling applied only to the Luton's case and it is unclear whether other courts will consider the judgment to have established case law.

If the court allows the case to proceed, the school may be forced to back down, potentially rendering any policy on uniform unenforceable at any school threatened with legal action.

The case is complicated because the girl's sisters were allowed to wear the niqab when a different head was in charge. A new policy has been introduced later that the father is challenging. The girl has not been excluded, but has been out of school since early October.

In his letter to the school, Dr Hargey said the father's insistence on his daughter wearing the niqab was a ''non-Islamic imposition upon your institution''.

''We are strongly committed to offering you our full and unequivocal support in banning face-masks at school. We trust that you will continue to resist any move to implement this kind of minority ethnic obsession, which has no foundation, whatsoever, in the transcendent sources of the Islamic law,'' he added.

Dr Hargey said that since the school's dress code already allowed the option for Muslim girls to wear the hijab, there was no need for full-face covering.

Paul Goodman, the Conservative MP for Wycombe, has pressed the county council to back the school. But, although, it says it supports the school's right to decide its own dress code, the council has not promised to fund a legal defence.

''My own view is that we don't want veils in our schools. Veils are a sign of separation,'' he said.

The school has sought to stay out of the wider cultural issues involved and has taken a stand for ''educational and security reasons''.

UNI