Daily Mail
September 29, 2013
Pupils have to wear hijabs in and OUT of class for the first time at a state-backed school in Blackburn.
The cover-up was ordered at the 800-pupil Tauheedul Islam Girls’ High School where students already have to dress in long purple tunics over black trousers to ensure flesh is not seen.
Under the rules, pupils must ‘wear the hijab outside the school and home, recite the Koran at a least once a week’ and not have stationery which shows ‘unIslamic images’ like pictures of pop stars.
Ten per cent of the students in the sixth-form wear the niqab veil which covers the face except the eyes.
The voluntary-aided school is the flagship of the Tauheedul charitable trust which wants to open 12 Muslim free schools across the country.
Three have been approved so far with one in Hackney opening this month, despite concerns raised by a former government advisor on the prevention of terrorism.
Haris Rafiq told the Sunday Times: ‘I think it threatens to create young British Muslims who are not able to integrate in the wider society, who are living in isolation and outside the wider community.’
In a statement on the school website headmaster Hamid Patel said:’This story is wrong. It is totally incorrect to say that pupils are ‘forced’ to wear hijab outside of school.
‘We are extremely sorry that despite repeated attempts by us to make sure the Sunday Times got their facts right, this newspaper chose to wilfully misrepresent our school.’