Switzerland: Court rules Muslim girls MUST swim with boys after Government says integrate or leave

The fact that this had to go to the European Court of Human Rights shows how deep the crisis in Europe really is. Why is a country’s standing up for its own principles and mores a matter for legal adjudication? It ought to be taken for granted.

“Court rules Muslim girls MUST swim with boys after Government says integrate or leave,” by Rebecca Perring, Express, January 10, 2017:

SWITZERLAND has won a landmark court case, which has ruled Muslim parents must send their children to mixed swimming lessons.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said school bosses are justified in enforcing the “full school curriculum” and children’s “succesful integration” into society.

Although the court recognised religious freedoms were being interfered with, judges said there was no violation.

The landmark case comes after two Swiss nationals, of Turkish origin, from Basel refused to send their teenager daughters to mixed swimming lessons.

Education bosses said exemptions were only available for girls who had reached the age of puberty – which the girls hadn’t reached at the time.

The parents were ordered to pay a fine of around 1,300 swiss francs (£1,100) for “acting in breach of their parental duty” after a long-running fued [sic] in 2010.

Therefore they argued this was a breach of article nine of the ECHR, which covers the religious rights.

However the ECHR held unanimously, that there had been “no violation of Article 9 (right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion) of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

Judges said the law involved was designed to “protect foreign pupils from any form of social exclusion.”

Switzerland last year rejected citizenship requests from two Muslim girls for refusing to take part in swimming lessons with boys at school.

The 12 and 14-year-old will no longer be considered for naturalised citizenship because they refused to comply with the school curriculum, officials said. …