Statement says it made clear to Michaela community school that ‘in winter it would not be possible to pray later’

One of the UK’s most prominent mosques has denied providing advice to the Michaela community school that all afternoon prayers could be deferred, disputing claims heard in court.

Katharine Birbalsingh, who runs the non-faith state school in Wembley and is often called “Britain’s strictest headteacher”, defeated a high court challenge this week to her policy of stopping pupils praying at lunchtime.

We would like to hear from Muslims in the UK about theirs or their children’s experiences of prayer at school

A Muslim pupil has lost their high court appeal against Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, over its ban on prayer rituals. The pupil had claimed the ban was discriminatory and breached her right to religious freedom.

We would like to hear from Muslims in the UK about their experiences of prayer when they were at school. We’re particularly interested in hearing from Muslims aged 18 or over who were able to pray at school in the UK and parents who are comfortable with sharing their children’s experiences.

The authorities declared the senseless act of violence in Wakeley a terrorist act within 18 hours – why the rush?

As I reflect on the tragic events involving the stabbing of the Assyrian Orthodox bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel while presenting a sermon in his church in south-western Sydney, I am filled with a profound sense of sorrow and concern for the state of our society.

This senseless act of violence, labelled as an act of terrorism by authorities, raises questions about radicalisation and the vulnerability of young people within our communities.

Kids pausing their football so a friend can pray; theology chats over lunch – I’ve seen the richness that religious diversity brings to school life

A Muslim student at Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, has lost a high court challenge to the school’s ban on prayer rituals. As a Muslim secondary schoolteacher, I have to say I am disappointed – but not surprised.

The appeal was lost on the grounds that the school declares itself secular. This is something the headteacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, insists all students and parents know when applying. In the written judgment dismissing the student’s case, Mr Justice Linden went as far as to say that: “The claimant at the very least impliedly accepted, when she enrolled at the school, that she would be subject to restrictions on her ability to manifest her religion.”

Nadeine Asbali is a secondary school teacher in London and the author of Veiled Threat: On Being Visibly Muslim in Britain

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Muslim pupil loses case against Michaela community school, run by former government social mobility tsar Katharine Birbalsingh

A ban on prayer rituals at one of the highest-performing state schools in England, famous for its strict discipline and high-profile headteacher, has been upheld by a high court judge.

The case against Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, was brought by a Muslim pupil, known only as TTT in court proceedings, who claimed the ban was discriminatory and breached her right to religious freedom.

Featuring stars including Riz Ahmed and Nabhaan Rizwan, the event aims to celebrate the ‘rich tapestry of Muslim experiences via the medium of film’

The UK’s first major film festival dedicated to Muslim cinema announced its inaugural lineup on Tuesday, with a slew of award-winning films featuring the likes of Riz Ahmed and Informer’s Nabhaan Rizwan.

Ahmed, winner of an Oscar for best live action short film, will appear in Dammi, a short film directed by Yann Demange, the French film-maker best known for Top Boy and Northern Ireland-set drama ’71. Ahmed co-stars with Isabelle Adjani in a story about a man confronting his French and Algerian heritage on a trip to Paris. Rizwan plays the lead in In Camera, a British feature directed by Naqqash Khalid that screened at the London film festival, as an actor struggling to make a career in the film industry in the face of repeated rejections.

A region known as ‘God’s land’ offers a glimpse of the future if Indian prime minister’s BJP party retains its power

For centuries it has been known as the “land of the gods”. Stretching high up into the Himalayas, the Indian state of Uttarakhand is home to tens of thousands of Hindu temples and some of the holiest Hindu pilgrimage sites.

Yet as Hindu nationalism has become the dominant political force in India under prime minister Narendra Modi over the past decade, the government is accused of weaponising Uttarakhand’s sacred status for politics, making the state a “laboratory” for some of the most extreme rightwing policies and rhetoric targeting the Muslim minority.

This failed policy was sold as a defence of French secularism. Instead it has opened the floodgates of intolerance and become a tool for exclusion

In the early 2000s, I decided to commit to feminism, so I joined a feminist campaigning group, convinced I had found an organisation that would defend the rights of every woman equally. At the time, a national debate was raging: in the name of laïcité – or secularism – France was questioning Muslim schoolgirls’ right to wear head coverings in secular state schools. In March 2004, after months of debate, the French parliament voted through a ban on headscarves in schools, outlawing “symbols or clothing that conspicuously demonstrate a pupil’s religious affiliation”.

That is when I realised that the decision was quite popular in feminist circles, including the predominantly white group I was part of. Many white feminists thought it was their mission to help emancipate Muslim women and girls from a particular type of patriarchy tied to Islam. I quit the group. If Muslim women were enduring a specific form of patriarchal oppression, and really had no agency or free will when it came to wearing the hijab – a view I don’t share – how would it help them to exclude them from schools and access to emancipatory knowledge?

While some were freed or escaped, the authorities’ waning interest and ongoing mass abductions by militants has left campaigners and families of missing pupils in despair

When her Boko Haram captors told Margret Yama she would be going home, she thought it was a trick. She and the other girls kidnapped from their school in Chibok, in north-east Nigeria’s Borno state, had been held for three years and had been taunted before about the possibility of release.

Conditions where they were being held in Sambisa Forest were harsh. Food and water were limited, the work was hard and the surveillance from the Islamist militants was suffocating. But then came the day in May 2017 when the girls were escorted to a Red Cross convoy on the edges of the forest.

Muslims mark the start of the three-day festival that signals the end of the holy month of Ramadan

One Briton says celebration is ‘reminder of how blessed we are’ as thoughts turn to those facing famine in besieged strip

Millions of Muslims across the UK celebrated Eid on Wednesday after the first sighting of the new crescent moon, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

The Baitul Futuh mosque in London, one of the largest in Europe, welcomed more than 5,000 people to pray and celebrate the three-day festival, one of the most important holidays in the Islamic calendar.

Footage from around the world has captured celebrations of Eid al-Fitr as Muslims marked the end of the fasting month of Ramadan with the three-day festival. For many, however, the six-month war in Gaza has cast a shadow on the Islamic holiday

Class-action settlement covers people required to take off religious attire by NYPD after Muslim women said their rights were violated

New York City agreed to pay $17.5m to settle a lawsuit by two Muslim women who said the police violated their rights after arresting them, by forcing them to remove their hijabs before being photographed.

The preliminary class action settlement covers men and women required to remove religious attire before being photographed. It was filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court, and requires approval by the US district judge Analisa Torres.

Bechan Baba has dedicated his life to Varanasi’s Anarwali mosque, where Hindus and Muslims come to pray – despite the historical disputes raging outside

In the heart of Varanasi, where the sacred Ganges meanders by and incense smoke mingles with the faint echoes of prayers from a myriad of temples, Bechan Baba sits at the entrance of the Anarwali mosque. A silent sentinel, the 72-year-old Hindu caretaker leans back on weathered stones that were laid almost 400 years ago.

Bechan has dedicated his working life to the service of this ancient mosque, which represents a sense of unity in a city wrestling with historical disputes.

Religious leaders reject division and celebrate diversity at city’s first interfaith iftar

As politicians continue to argue and the war in Gaza rages on, leaders from the Muslim and Jewish communities in Bradford held an interfaith iftar on Wednesday evening, to celebrate the diversity of this part of West Yorkshire.

Laurence Saffer, the president of the Leeds Jewish representative council, described the similarities between practising Islam and Judaism and said it was important to attend the iftar – the evening meal held by Muslims observing Ramadan – because “it’s what we do”.

Joram van Klaveren played a key role in Geert Wilders’ Freedom party but is now actively working to counteract its message

He was once Geert Wilders’ right-hand man, crafting Freedom party (PVV) messaging that described Islam as a “lie” and pushed for the Qur’an and mosques to be banned in the Netherlands.

One decade on, Joram van Klaveren is a Muslim convert – the second politician from the far-right PVV to convert – and actively working to dismantle the myths he once peddled.

Three stores hit with molotov cocktails after pictures of socks deemed offensive by Muslims shared on social media

Three stores belonging to a Malaysian minimart chain that sold socks carrying the word “Allah” have been targeted with molotov cocktails over the past week, in a rare case of such violence.

One of KK Super Mart’s stores in Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, in Malaysian Borneo, was hit by a molotov cocktail on Sunday, a day after a separate attack on a store in Pahang on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. On 26 March, a store in Perak was also targeted with a petrol bomb, though it did not ignite, according to local media.

All-female lineup of presenters hope to break harmful Islamic stereotypes after Geert Wilders’ election victory

An hour before dawn in a nondescript building in Hilversum, a sleepy town half an hour south of Amsterdam, Nora Akachar grabs the microphone. There is nothing unique about a radio host summoning the nation out of its slumber. But this is, in her own words, “a big deal”.

The Dutch Moroccan actor turned radio host is live on air presenting Suhoor Stories, a talk radio show presented by seven Dutch Muslim women, inviting Muslim guests to demystify Ramadan for the wider public. The programme is believed to be Europe’s only daily Ramadan radio and television show aired by a national public broadcaster.

A class about free speech was cynically exploited by activists to incite fury in a local community

Three years ago, on 25 March 2021, a teacher from Batley Grammar School (BGS) in West Yorkshire was forced into hiding after a religious studies class he gave led to protests from Muslim parents and to death threats. Today, that incident has been largely forgotten. Except by the teacher. He can’t forget it because, extraordinarily, he and his family are still in hiding. Equally extraordinarily, little is said about this.

The debate about the events at BGS, like many about Islam, blasphemy and offence, has been framed by two polarised arguments. Many on the reactionary right (and not just the reactionary right) view such confrontations as the unacceptable price of mass immigration and the inevitable product of a Muslim presence in western societies. Many liberals and radicals, on the other hand, think it morally wrong to cause offence, believing that for diverse societies to function, there is a need to self-censor so as not to disrespect different cultures and beliefs. Neither argument bears much scrutiny. The most comprehensive account of the events at BGS comes in a review published last week by Sara Khan, the government’s independent adviser on “social cohesion and resilience”. The lesson that sparked the controversy was designed, ironically, to explore issues of blasphemy and free speech, and of appropriate ways of responding to religious disagreements.

Hakim Miloudi and London Broncos teammate Iliess Macani hope Super League stars observing Ramadan will inspire others

London Broncos’ Challenge Cup defeat at Warrington Wolves last weekend was largely uneventful given the final scoreline, but there was a moment of huge significance almost everyone would have missed midway through the Broncos’ 42-0 defeat.

Support staff providing players with water is nothing new, but the sight of London’s physio entering the field with a handful of dates specifically for the Broncos’ Hakim Miloudi to break his fast while the game continued perhaps emphasised the work rugby league still has to do to recognise Muslim athletes. “There was no time to stop and break my fast properly, I was making tackles within seconds of eating,” Miloudi smiles.