FROM the Belgian port city of Antwerp comes a sad tale: of a school headmistress whose efforts to construct a haven of multicultural dialogue have been wrecked by the intolerance of others.

In recent years, a growing number of schools in Antwerp (a tough but buzzing city, where the anti-immigrant far-right picks up about a third of the vote in local elections) have banned outright the wearing of Muslim veils and headscarves by female pupils. Karin Heremans, headmistress of the Antwerp Atheneum (a prestigious sort of secondary/high school) tried another approach. Ms Heremans is described in the local press as a champion of cultural diversity in the school system, who fought for nine years for the right of her pupils to wear headscarves if they wished. She wanted her state school to be a place of “inclusive neutrality”, in which religions are not excluded from the curriculum but “cohabit” with it. She took seriously the idea of Antwerp as a diverse city, which it certainly is: a large and growing Muslim community co-exists with a smaller but highly visible Hassidic community, a fairly radicalised nationalist Flemish white population and a rather tolerant, intellectual bourgeoisie. She organised concerts of Jewish and Muslim musicians in a local church, for example, and sat on endless committees trying to puzzle out how to make integration and multiculturalism work.

Alas, as her school became a rare place where veils were permitted, in addition to girls taking refuge in her liberal policies came girls from families dominated by radical Islamism. Instead of being a beacon of tolerance, her school became a “ghetto” in the words of one supporter. The proportion of headscarf-wearing girls went from 50% to 80% in three years, and girls who did not wear scarves found themselves under stronger and stronger pressure to cover up. The school found itself “targeted” by Islamist hardliners who began questioning certain lessons, school excursions, and trying to block the organisation of mixed gender parents' meetings, Ms Heremans told Le Soir, a Francophone daily, this morning (no link).

Finally, when term began this month, she banned the headscarf. She described this as a “difficult and frustrating” decision. There was a protest by about 60 radical Islamists on the first day of term, some of whom insulted and publicly threatened her, according to Le Soir.

It is a bad idea to draw broad conclusions from a single case. By instinct, I am strongly secularist, as it happens. I quail a bit at the French solution, ie, banning all headscarves in all schools, by law. Or rather, I don't see how it could be pulled off in a country that does not have a long tradition of aggressively secular state schools, like France. In countries like Belgium or Britain, religion is part of the school system, and a legal move against Muslim dress codes is easy to present as discrimination. I used to think I was in favour of muddling through in most cases, and I am still tempted by the idea that good manners and calmness can help more than many people think.

But the latest trouble in Antwerp seems to have been caused by a piecemeal approach. Ms Heremans is now calling on politicians to launch a proper debate on headscarves, and stop hiding behind the idea that individual schools are “autonomous” in this matter. A wider law or ruling is being called for. "The headscarf question is much more serious than we thought," concludes Ms Heremans.

I do not share the doomy predictions of the Eurabia crowd. Europeans are not sleep walking into the abandonment of western civilisation. They are trying to work out how to adapt to fast changing societies, and they have their eyes wide open. And societies have always evolved. Immigrants in previous centuries and decades have prompted remarkably similar fusses, and are now well integrated. Young Spanish women did not have much freedom in the villages of their native Andalucia, 50 years ago.

Yet the arrival of traditional, pious immigrants in Europe does clearly test the liberal values that I hold dear. In short, how should a liberal, tolerant society protect the rights of a less liberal minority in its midst? Anyone with a quick answer to that one, I would suggest, is a fraud or a demagogue.

FROM the Belgian port city of Antwerp comes a sad tale: of a school headmistress whose efforts to construct a haven of multicultural dialogue have been wrecked by the intolerance of others.

In recent years, a growing number of schools in Antwerp (a tough but buzzing city, where the anti-immigrant far-right picks up about a third of the vote in local elections) have banned outright the wearing of Muslim veils and headscarves by female pupils. Karin Heremans, headmistress of the Antwerp Atheneum (a prestigious sort of secondary/high school) tried another approach. Ms Heremans is described in the local press as a champion of cultural diversity in the school system, who fought for nine years for the right of her pupils to wear headscarves if they wished. She wanted her state school to be a place of “inclusive neutrality”, in which religions are not excluded from the curriculum but “cohabit” with it. She took seriously the idea of Antwerp as a diverse city, which it certainly is: a large and growing Muslim community co-exists with a smaller but highly visible Hassidic community, a fairly radicalised nationalist Flemish white population and a rather tolerant, intellectual bourgeoisie. She organised concerts of Jewish and Muslim musicians in a local church, for example, and sat on endless committees trying to puzzle out how to make integration and multiculturalism work.

Alas, as her school became a rare place where veils were permitted, in addition to girls taking refuge in her liberal policies came girls from families dominated by radical Islamism. Instead of being a beacon of tolerance, her school became a “ghetto” in the words of one supporter. The proportion of headscarf-wearing girls went from 50% to 80% in three years, and girls who did not wear scarves found themselves under stronger and stronger pressure to cover up. The school found itself “targeted” by Islamist hardliners who began questioning certain lessons, school excursions, and trying to block the organisation of mixed gender parents' meetings, Ms Heremans told Le Soir, a Francophone daily, this morning (no link).

Finally, when term began this month, she banned the headscarf. She described this as a “difficult and frustrating” decision. There was a protest by about 60 radical Islamists on the first day of term, some of whom insulted and publicly threatened her, according to Le Soir.

It is a bad idea to draw broad conclusions from a single case. By instinct, I am strongly secularist, as it happens. I quail a bit at the French solution, ie, banning all headscarves in all schools, by law. Or rather, I don't see how it could be pulled off in a country that does not have a long tradition of aggressively secular state schools, like France. In countries like Belgium or Britain, religion is part of the school system, and a legal move against Muslim dress codes is easy to present as discrimination. I used to think I was in favour of muddling through in most cases, and I am still tempted by the idea that good manners and calmness can help more than many people think.

But the latest trouble in Antwerp seems to have been caused by a piecemeal approach. Ms Heremans is now calling on politicians to launch a proper debate on headscarves, and stop hiding behind the idea that individual schools are “autonomous” in this matter. A wider law or ruling is being called for. "The headscarf question is much more serious than we thought," concludes Ms Heremans.

I do not share the doomy predictions of the Eurabia crowd. Europeans are not sleep walking into the abandonment of western civilisation. They are trying to work out how to adapt to fast changing societies, and they have their eyes wide open. And societies have always evolved. Immigrants in previous centuries and decades have prompted remarkably similar fusses, and are now well integrated. Young Spanish women did not have much freedom in the villages of their native Andalucia, 50 years ago.

Yet the arrival of traditional, pious immigrants in Europe does clearly test the liberal values that I hold dear. In short, how should a liberal, tolerant society protect the rights of a less liberal minority in its midst? Anyone with a quick answer to that one, I would suggest, is a fraud or a demagogue.