Some private schools in Quebec continue to forbid Muslim students from wearing head scarves, and critics pressed the province's top human-rights body yesterday to take a position on the controversial practice.
Muslim and civil-rights groups are upset because a highly publicized complaint by a Montreal teenager forced out of a private school last year for wearing a head scarf was quietly dropped. Quebec has ruled that public schools may not forbid students from wearing head scarves. But it has yet to take a position on private schools, despite the fact that Quebec has the highest participation rate in private schools in Canada.