A Muslim family in Granada chooses a Catholic school and demands that the courts teach Islam there
The Board offered them three alternatives, but they want Islam instead of Catholicism. The claim is part of a community campaign to demand Islam and halal in schools.
Façade of the Juan XXIII School
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The courts have closed the door on requiring Islamic religious classes to be taught at a Catholic-run school in Granada. The Supreme Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) has ruled that The Juan XXIII College is not obliged to offer this subject to a Muslim pupil., as his family demanded. The court considers that this requirement is at odds with the centre's own character. According to reports American Broadcasting Company, the resolution rejects The parents' demand that the minor be allowed to continue attending the Catholic school while also receiving Islamic religious classes..
They had three alternatives, but they wanted Islam instead of Catholicism.
The family enrolled their daughter in a concerted school with an unequivocally Catholic ethos. The school placed no obstacle to a Muslim pupil studying in its classrooms. In fact, during the court proceedings the family itself used this circumstance as an argument: it maintained that, If the school accepted Muslim pupils, teaching the Islamic religion should also not be incompatible with its ethos..
The conflict began when the parents wanted to go one step further and demanded that their daughter be allowed to receive Islamic religious classes within the same Catholic centre. The centre refused, and the Andalusian Board offered them three schools near Juan XXIII where the minor could take the subject. The family maintained their request that it be the school where she was already enrolled that provided it.
Thus, the dispute was no longer simply about the minor's right to study Islamic religion, which the Administration guaranteed through other centres, but about whether that right permitted To compel a Catholic school to include the teaching of Islam in its educational provision.. The TSJA has concluded that it does not: the pupil's religious freedom does not override the right of the concerted school to preserve its own character.
The campaign to Islamise schools
The Juan XXIII case did not arise from an isolated initiative by this family. In 2021, the Islamic association Aljibe-Dar Al Anwar, together with the Muslim Federation of Spain (FEME), launched a campaign in Granada to encourage Muslim families to demand Islamic religious classes and menu halal to the schools where their children were studying. The same organisations explained that they wanted to «raise awareness and encourage parents and guardians to request these rights» and set up a platform to coordinate the requests.
The mobilisation yielded results. During the first months of 2021, nearly 200 applications were collected from families in Granada city and surrounding municipalities so that their children could take Islamic religion classes. According to the documentation that subsequently reached the TSJA, Ten centres achieved the minimum of ten pupils per year group. Required to organise the classes. The campaign went a step further: FEME proposed candidates to serve as Islamic religion teachers and forwarded their names to the Islamic Commission of Spain so that they could be accredited and put forward to the education authorities.
Among those requests was one from the family of John XXIII. In the absence of a response from the centre and the Junta of Andalusia, the parents went to court and In 2022, the TSJA partially upheld their case., on the grounds that the Administration had not taken the necessary measures to ensure the minor's right to receive Islamic religious education. That first victory, however, did not establish that Juan XXIII was obliged to teach the subject. This difference would eventually give rise to a new legal battle: the family interpreted the ruling as supporting their claim at the same Catholic school, whereas the Board maintained that it could guarantee the right by offering other schools.
Now the judges clarify that the 2022 victory did not recognise a right to receive Islamic religious instruction at any school chosen by the family and that, in a Catholic school, the institution's own character must also be respected.
The law also protects the Catholic school.
The paradox is that the limit to the family's claim is found in the very provision that guarantees the teaching of Islam in Spain. Law 26/1992 recognises Muslim pupils' right to receive Islamic religious instruction in state and concerted schools. However, in the latter it introduces an express condition: The exercise of this right cannot be in contradiction with the character of the centre.«.
And John XXIII doesn't hide which one is his. Its ethos defines it as a Catholic centre and situates the educational project within the Church's evangelising mission.. It is precisely this identity that the TSJA considers must be preserved. The family's right to request Islamic religious education exists, but it does not become a right to compel a confessional institution of another religion to include it in its offerings.
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