SHARE
COPY LINK

MUSLIM

School brings in legal expert over handshake issue

A Swiss legal expert will decide on the validity of a controversial decision by a school in northern Switzerland that allows male Muslim students to avoid shaking hands with female teachers for religious reasons, an official said on Tuesday.

School brings in legal expert over handshake issue
The school is located in Therwil, near the city of Basel. File photo: Michelle Kinsey Bruns

The decision by a school in Therwil sought to reach a compromise with two male students, aged 14 and 15, and their families, but ended up causing uproar and fierce public debate over the limits of religious freedom.
   
“We have asked for an expert opinion from our legal service,” said Deborah Murith, spokeswoman for the education department in the canton of Basel-Country, where Therwil is located.
   
The two students informed the school that the Swiss custom of pupils shaking teachers' hands violated their faith if the teacher is a woman.
   
To avoid approving the de facto discrimination of female teachers, the school decided to exempt the boys from shaking hands with any of their teachers, regardless of sex.
   
That ruling — made independently by the school without involvement of the cantonal authorities or municipal officials — triggered an outcry across Switzerland.
   
Murith told AFP that the case was “not simple” and that Basel was now trying “to find a balance between religious liberty, the right to education and the legally enshrined equality between men and women.”
   
She said the compromise reached by the school could serve as a “provisional measure”, while the legal expert prepares guidance, without specifying when that decision would be made.
   
The head of the Therwil school system, Christine Akeret, told Swiss media that she plans to abide by the expert ruling, but voiced frustration that she had not previously been given instruction from higher authorities on the matter.
   
Murith agreed that “there is currently a gap in the current regulation on this subject.
   
“That is why we have asked for an expert legal opinion,” she said.

In an interview with 20 Minuten on Tuesday, Nabil Arab, manager of the foundation running the Basel mosque attended by the two boys – where their father is the Imam, according to reports – defended the boys, saying that they simply want to practise their religion.

Their refusal to shake hands with women was guided by the life of the Prophet, he said, and was actually a sign of respect.

“No woman wants to be a sex object,” he told the paper, saying that physical contact with women was a stimuli for young men that could end badly.

“I understand that it may seem strange to many Swiss and I can understand the criticism,” Arab added. 
   
Switzerland's population of eight million people includes an estimated 350,000 Muslims.
   
Previous similar disputes have centred on Muslim parents who demanded that their daughters be exempt from swimming lessons, a case that led to the parents being fined.
   
Muslim families have however secured victories in court against schools which sought to ban the full face veil.

 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

DISCRIMINATION

Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

Parents with Arabic-sounding names get a less friendly response and less help when choosing schools in Sweden, according to a new study from the University of Uppsala.

Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

In one of the largest discrimination experiments ever carried out in the country, 3,430 primary schools were contacted via email by a false parent who wanted to know more about the school. The parent left information about their name and profession.

In the email, the false parent stated that they were interested in placing their child at the school, and questions were asked about the school’s profile, queue length, and how the application process worked. The parent was either low-educated (nursing assistant) or highly educated (dentist). Some parents gave Swedish names and others gave “Arabic-sounding” names.

The report’s author, Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh said that the study had demonstrated “relatively large and statistically significant negative effects” for the fictional Arabic parents. 

“Our results show that responses to emails signed with Arabic names from school principals are less friendly, are less likely to indicate that there are open slots, and are less likely to contain positive information about the school,” he told The Local. 

READ ALSO: Men with foreign names face job discrimination in Sweden: study

The email responses received by the fictional Arabic parents were rated five percent less friendly than those received by the fictional Swedish parents, schools were 3.2 percentage points less likely to tell Arabic parents that there were open slots at the school, and were 3.9 percentage points less likely to include positive information about the municipality or the school. 

There was no statistically significant difference in the response rate and number of questions answered by schools to Swedish or Arabic-sounding parents. 

Taghizadeh said that there was more discrimination against those with a low social-economic status job than against those with an Arabic name, with the worst affected group being those who combined the two. 

“For socioeconomic discrimination, the results are similar, however, here the discrimination effects are somewhat larger,” he told The Local. 

Having a high economic status profession tended to cancel out the negative effects of having an Arabic name. 

“The discrimination effects are substantially important, as they could potentially indirectly influence parents’ school choice decision,” Taghizadeh said.

Investigating socioeconomic discrimination is also important in itself, as discrimination is seldom studied and as explicit discrimination legislation that bans class-based discrimination is rare in Western countries including Sweden, in contrast to laws against ethnic discrimination.” 

SHOW COMMENTS