Muslim girl must wear school uniform

The Court of Appeal in March last year ruled that Shabina Begum was unlawfully excluded from Denbigh High School in Luton, north of London, after she refused to change out of the head-to-toe jilbab.

The school then appealed to the panel of five judges at the House of Lords, Britain's de facto supreme court, which ruled Wednesday that the school was fully justified in acting as it did.

"It had taken immense pains to devise a uniform policy which respected Muslim beliefs but did so in an inclusive, unthreatening and uncompetitive way," Lord Thomas Bingham ruled.

"The rules laid down were as far from being mindless as uniform rules could ever be. The school had enjoyed a period of harmony and success to which the uniform policy was thought to contribute."