The opening of more Islamic faith schools should be stopped amid fears they will fuel social segregation, according to teachers.

Government plans to create more state-funded Muslim schools will divide communities along racial and religious lines, it is claimed.

They risk creating a situation similar to that in Northern Ireland where some educated teenagers fail to meet students of the opposite faith until they go to university, according to Voice, the teaching union.

In a speech to the union's annual conference next week, one teacher will claim Labour's policy to expand Muslim schools is "about trying to defend minorities".

Last year, Ed Balls, the schools secretary, pledged to remove "unnecessary barriers" to religious groups bidding to open their own schools.

He said additional money would be made available to allow the hundreds of private religious schools to convert to the state sector. The move raised the prospect of more schools for faiths including Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, which have few schools of their own, despite representing significant minority groups.

Speaking at the conference, Wesley Paxton, a further education lecturer from Hull, will say: "More faith schools in 2008 is probably going to mean more Islamic schools." [Link]

No public servant - including Muslim teachers and judges - should be allowed to wear anything at work that shows what religion they belong to, leaders of Quebec's two biggest trade union federations and a civil-servants' union told the Bouchard-Taylor commission Monday.

"We think that teachers shouldn't wear any religious symbols - same thing for a judge in court, or a minister in the National Assembly, or a policeman - certainly not," said Rene Roy, secretary-general of the 500,000-member Quebec Federation of Labour

"The wearing of any religious symbol should be forbidden in the workplace of the civil service . . . in order to ensure the secular character of the state," said Lucie Grandmont, vice-president of the 40,000-member Quebec union of public employees.

Dress codes that ban religious expression should be part of a new "charter of secularism" - akin to the Charter of the French Language - that the Quebec government should adopt, said Claudette Carbonneau, president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions.

Such a charter is needed "to avoid anarchy, to avoid treating (reasonable-accommodation) cases one by one," Carbonneau said Monday, presenting a brief on behalf of the federation's 300,000 members at the commission's hearing on the integration of immigrants in Montreal.

That's the same point of view as the 150,000-member Centrale des syndicats du Quebec, which includes 100,000 who work in the school system, the commission heard.

Quebec needs a "fundamental law" akin to the Charter of Rights that sets out clearly that public institutions, laws and the state are all neutral when it comes to religion, said Centrale president Rejean Parent. The new law would also "define (people's) rights and duties . . . in other words, the rules of living together."

Under a secular charter, employers would understand that they don't have to agree to accommodate religious employees if, for example, they ask to be segregated from people of the opposite sex, Carbonneau said.

Similarly, religious students in public schools would understand they can dress as they like, but not if it means wearing restrictive clothing like burkas, niqabs and chadors, which make communication difficult, she told commissioners Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor.

And in the courts, "there are cases that are clear - I wouldn't want to see a judge in a veil," she said. Judges need to appear "neutral" so as to inspire confidence in their judgment, she added.

The unions' anti-religious attitude - especially the idea to ban hijabs on teachers - got a cold reception from groups as disparate as a Muslim women's aid organization and the nationalist St.-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montreal.

"What that would do is close the door to Muslim women who want to teach," said Samaa Elibyari, a Montreal community radio host who spoke for the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. "It goes against religious freedoms that are guaranteed in the (Quebec) Charter of Rights." [Link]

Does the wearing a burkha, nose rings or a mangalsutra undermine a modern secular society?

In England, a woman who worked at a catering services firm at Heathrow airport, was sacked for wearing a nose ring. London's Mayor Ken Livingstone says this is an attack on her right to express her religion.

Other western countries have gone a step further. France has banned the wearing of headscarves and turbans in school whereas in England a teacher was sacked for wearing a veil.

So, does the West overreact to Asian cultural symbols?....

From nose-pins to crucifixes to turbans and the burqa, across many western countries there seems to be a suspicion of the overt display of religious identity. A crack down on cultural and religious symbols has been brewing in the West for a long time.

A law banning Islamic headscarves and other religious symbols from French schools came into effect in 2004. The normally tolerant government of the Netherlands also banned the all-covering veil worn by fewer than hundred Muslim women in the entire country in 2006.

The same year Italy put forward legislation to ban-the naqab and the burka-the Islamic veil that covers the face.

Some German states have banned teachers in public schools from wearing headscarves.

In fact in October 2006, a British Muslim teacher, Aisha Azmi was sacked for refusing to remove her veil in class.

And the recent policy of US airports to screen Sikh turbans also led to a huge uproar among Sikhs in the US and in India.

Why is Western Europe banning symbols, which represent a "conspicuous" sign of religious affiliation? Be it the Islamic scarves, the Sikh turbans or the Jewish skullcaps?

For some it is a clash of civilizations. But considering the fact that British airways suspended an employee for wearing a crucifix in 2006 it seems to be part of a difficult drive towards secularization, in an increasingly multicultural Europe.

However you take it, wearing religious symbols in public is a burning issue across Europe. [Link]

In Quebec it's called "reasonable accommodation" when it comes to accepting the cultural practices of immigrants - and the debate on the thorny issue is about to be thrown wide open.

Quebecers of all origins will have the chance in public hearings this fall to speak their minds about how immigrants should fit into the province.

Philosopher Charles Taylor and sociologist Gerard Bouchard will chair the proceedings in 17 Quebec communities and are encouraging old-stock francophones, immigrants and anglophones to speak out on the subject.

"We have to cover the shaky ground that we have neglected, hidden and pushed aside for years," Bouchard, the brother of former premier Lucien Bouchard, said Tuesday.

"For better or for worse, we're going to deliberately navigate this shaky ground. We'll see if we survive or not, but we're convinced that it's what we now have to do"

Details of the hearings were announced against the backdrop of a public spat between Premier Jean Charest and Action democratique du Quebec Leader Mario Dumont over the number of immigrants needed in the province.

Charest has accused the ADQ leader of being narrow-minded on the issue.

Quebec currently accepts about 46,000 immigrants a year and Charest has been talking about a significant increase in that number.

The hearings on the so-called reasonable accommodations will begin in early September and run until Nov. 30.

Charest announced the hearings last winter after a lengthy and sometimes acrimonious public debate on the integration of immigrants into the province, a French-speaking minority in North America that considers itself a progressive, secular society.

The controversy was fuelled by various events, including a small town's decision to set up a code of conduct for immigrants, as well as the banning of hijabs from sports competitions such as taekwondo and soccer.

During this year's provincial election campaign, Quebec's chief returning officer received threats and was forced to overturn a ruling that allowed women to vote while wearing a niqab, a more extensive face-covering than the hijab.

A Montreal community health centre came under fire for holding women-only pre-natal classes to make Muslim, Sikh or Hindu women feel more comfortable.

Bouchard said while birthrates are low in many industrialized western societies, Quebecers are worried about their survival and their collective identity.

"Everybody knows there are immigrants in Quebec, everybody knows there are different cultures, and so forth, but it's like all of a sudden a big part of French-Canadian Quebecers have just really become aware of it," he said.

Dumont said Quebec needs more immigrants for economic reasons but must ensure "harmonious integration."

The ADQ leader criticized Charest for wanting to increase the number of immigrants when the Liberal government has cut funding for integrating newcomers into the French language and culture.

"We're a linguistic minority...and immigrants need francization," Dumont said. "It's quite a challenge."

Meanwhile, Parti Quebecois Leader Pauline Marois said Tuesday she believes Quebec should have total control over immigration instead of the partial control it now has.

Marois said immigrants must know that French is the common language in Quebec.

"Now they come into Canada and from their point of view it's a bilingual country but when they come to Quebec, you know, the common language is French and that is important." [Link]

More than a third of British Asians do not feel British, a BBC poll suggests.

The research among the under-34s for the Asian Network found 38% of the UK residents of South Asian origin felt only slightly or not at all British.

More than a third agreed to get on in the UK they needed to be a "coconut", a term for somebody who is "brown on the outside but white on the inside".

ICM Research interviewed 500 Asian people aged 16-34 and 235 white people aged 18-34 between 4 and 12 July.

Of those polled 84% were satisfied with life in Britain and almost half thought they have more opportunities here.

All of the British Asians polled were of South Asian origin.

Half of them, and nearly two-thirds of the white people interviewed, agreed it was too easy for immigrants to settle in Britain. [Link]

What do we call the following French person? She is born in France, and a citizen, but many of her compatriots treat her as an alien, threatening presence. She is easily recognizable, above all by her distinctive head covering, which proclaims her religious allegiance. No one questions her right to wear this garment at home or in her neighborhood's streets, but many of the French have a different opinion when it comes to official "public spaces"--above all, public schools. For many fervent defenders of the secular Republic, letting her into the schools would pose a threat to the Republic's very existence.

So what do we call this person? Until quite recently, we would have called her a nun. After all, hostility between the Catholic Church and the secular Republic marks broad swaths of French history. But of course it is not nuns who have been targeted by the recent law banning "ostentatious signs of religion" from French public schools, which John R. Bowen has put at the center of his lucid and thought-provoking book. The controversial French women at issue are headscarf-wearing Muslim schoolgirls.

The controversy around them continues to simmer in France, while also spilling across European borders. The Netherlands is considering an even broader ban, while Jack Straw, the leader of Britain's House of Commons, recently attacked the wearing of veils as a "visible statement of separation and of difference," and requested that women remove them when visiting him. This is one of the strangest, and most philosophically rattling, controversies in recent European memory, and in order to comprehend it we have to start with France, and consider the things that the odd shift from nuns to schoolgirls tells us about the relationship between religion and society there. I have in mind three things in particular. [Link]

Four hundred Montrealers attended a public forum Thursday evening to talk about reasonable accommodation, a hot-button issue that prompted Premier Jean Charest to launch a government commission after a Quebec town passed a controversial conduct code for immigrants last month.

Manjit Singh, a member of the Sikh community and the director of McGill University's Chaplaincy Services, said the Montreal public forum sponsored by CBC Radio was important because it helped clear up a lot of misconceptions.

"Just because I wear a turban, it should not be an issue for anyone," he said. "What they need to worry about is what is inside my head and not what's on my head."

Singh said some politicians are using the issue to divide people rather than promote tolerance. He said that might backfire since an election is expected to be called next week.

"If this becomes an election issue, which it seems to be headed for, people have to be able to make their choices, and it's better to be well-informed and then choose, rather than choose out of ignorance," he said.

The issue of reasonable accommodation reached a fever pitch in January after a municipal council in the Mauricie town of Hérouxville adopted a list of rules for immigrants, which was amended earlier this week after much public flak. [Link]

The scapegoating of the Muslim community has become the stock in trade of politicians, the Conservatives recently accusing the Muslim Council of Britain of separatist tendencies, and New Labour all too frequently indulging in the same kind of refrain - notably during the most disgraceful period of its domestic rule last autumn, when cabinet ministers were falling over themselves to make disparaging remarks about the Muslim community.

The argument typically starts from the global terrorist threat and ends up by suggesting the Muslim community nurtures and sustains such a terrorist mentality by its failure to integrate. Jack Straw squirmed about the veil, Ruth Kelly inveighed against imams, Alan Johnson proposed that faith schools admit up to 25% not of the same faith (patently directed against the Muslim community), and John Reid warned a Muslim audience of "fanatics looking to groom and brainwash [your] children ... for suicide bombing". Amid this panic-inducing rhetoric, there was little acknowledgment that Muslims suffer more discrimination than any other section of society, no recognition that every attack on their community can only intensify that prejudice. Imagine what it feels like to be a Muslim, stalked by a constant sense of distrust and suspicion? As a society we may condemn racism, but when it comes to Muslims, it seems to be somehow acceptable, from the cabinet downwards.

And what is to blame for this failure to integrate? Prejudice, perhaps? Discrimination? Racism? No, according to David Cameron, Ruth Kelly and many others, the cause would appear to be multiculturalism. Pause for a moment and spot the slippage in the argument. It is no longer only about Muslims but all our ethnic minorities. For enshrined in the principle of multiculturalism is the idea that the white community does not insist on the assimilation of ethnic minorities but recognises the importance of pluralism. It is not about separatism but a respect for difference - from colour and dress to customs and religion. The attack on multiculturalism is the thin end of the racism wedge. It seeks to narrow the acceptable boundaries of difference at a time when Britain is becoming ever more diverse and heterogeneous.

None of this is to deny the importance of finding ways of integrating the Muslim community. It is hardly surprising, though, that many young Muslims feel alienated. They face worse discrimination in education and employment than any other ethnic minority, Anglo-American policy in the Middle East has had the effect of demonising the Muslim world, and the Muslim community here finds itself the victim of a barrage of hostile propaganda. A major assault on discrimination involving the government, the media and the Muslim community is long overdue. But while British foreign policy so profoundly discriminates against the Muslim world, and New Labour remains in denial about the connection between domestic Muslim attitudes and its foreign policy, there seems little prospect of making a new start. [Link]