Should Muslim schoolgirls be required to attend swimming lessons with boys, against the wishes of their parents? According to the European Court of Human Rights, the answer is yes. Was that the right answer? On balance, I don’t think it was.
The case involved two Muslim girls attending school in Switzerland. According to a BBC report [1], the court ruled that the Swiss authorities were justified in giving precedence to enforcing “the full school curriculum” and the children’s “successful integration” into society.
The case had been taken by parents in respect of their two daughters.
The ECHR agreed that the refusal to exempt the girls had interfered with the right to freedom of religion of the parents, but it also said the law involved was designed to “protect foreign pupils from any form of social exclusion” and Switzerland was free to design its education system according to its own needs and traditions.
Schools, it said, played an important role in social integration, and exemptions from some lessons are “justified only in very exceptional circumstances”.
Swiss schools do allow an exemption from mixed-sex swimming classes when girls reach puberty but not before. The two girls at the centre of this case had not reached puberty at the time the parents removed them from swimming classes.
In this particular case the school in question had said the girls could wear a so-called ‘burkini’ (pictured) which would cover their entire bodies, but the parents turned down this compromise.
The ruling seems to me to be very heavy-handed. It would be one thing if the parents had insisted that swimming classes become unisex in order to accommodate Muslim pupils, but all they were asking for is that their own children could be exempted from mixed-sex swimming class. (They were receiving swimming lessons of their own outside school hours).
Forcing pupils to attend mixed-sex swimming classes against the religious convictions of their parents is not too unlike forcing children of atheist parents to attend religion class. It is not quite the same thing because religion class has a specific content, and swimming class does not. Nevertheless, mixed-sex swimming classes are against ideas of modesty held by some Muslims.
There is a lively, active and vitally necessary debate about how societies can best accommodate and integrate newcomers. This ruling is very much part of that debate. But it is hard to see how integration is advanced by forcing these girls to attend mixed-sex swimming classes when the girls are attending other classes during the day in any case. This is why the decision seems heavy-handed.