On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a 2008 decision in Switzerland that forced the daughters of Muslim couple to participate in a mandatory swimming class.
School officials in Basel, Switzerland originally mandated that the children—age nine and seven at the time—enroll in the required course. They would be allowed to wear burkinis—modest, body-covering swim suits and change separately from the boys.
When the parents—Aziz Osmanoglu and Sehabat Kocabas—rejected the offer, they received a fine of 1,400 Swiss francs (about $1,380 USD) in 2010.
The couple, who are both Swiss and Turkish, felt that the punishment violated the “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights.
“The public interest in following the full school curriculum should prevail over the applicants’ private interest in obtaining an exemption from mixed swimming lessons for their daughters,” the court found in the recent decision on Tuesday.
The authorities concluded that having swimming classes with boys and girls together was an important part of the school curriculum. While they would provide an exemption from the class for the girls, it would require them to have gone through puberty.
The nine and seven-year-old daughters of Mr. Osmanoglu and Ms. Kocabas had not met the requirements for the religious exemption.
Though the Quran does not mandate that girls cover their bodies until puberty, the couple felt that “their belief commanded them to prepare their daughters for the precepts that would be applied to them from puberty” onward, according to the court’s summary of the case.
The parents have three months to appeal the court’s decision.
Europe has had ongoing issues regarding conflicts of freedom of religion and social integration. The ruling could set a precedent in an era where governments are unsure of the extent they should accommodate the religious views of Muslims.
Far-right political parties across Europe—such as the National Front in France, the Danish People’s Party in Denmark, and the Swiss People’s Party in Switzerland—are anti-immigrant and feel that too many Muslims have defied assimilation.
In Switzerland, politicians and citizen groups called the ruling “an important validation of the supremacy of secularism and the rule of law,” according to the New York Times. Some Mulsims feel that the law is indicative of growing religious intolerance against minorities.
“The swimming pool verdict unfortunately is what we expected,” Qaasim Illi, a board member of the Swiss Central Islamic Council, wrote on Twitter.
“Tolerance toward the religious is diminishing throughout Europe.”
