Of all the problems you'd least want to land on your desk when you've just been made Minister for Education, responsibility for deciding whether Muslim schoolgirls should be allowed to wear the hijab in Irish schools must be pretty near top of the list. The good news for Batt O'Keeffe is that it doesn't take very long to say no.

He is going to say no, right?

The issue has arisen because the principal of one of the largest secondary schools in the country called on the Minister for Education to issue guidelines on the matter.

This isn't the first time Gorey Community School has sought advice either. Principal Nicholas Sweetman wrote to then Education Minister Mary Hanafin last October, after a Muslim couple asked that their child be allowed to wear the hijab in class. Permission was given by the school, but in the meantime teachers wanted official guidance from the government. None was forthcoming, save for some typical buck-passing about it being the business of the board of governors, blah, blah.

Now the school has asked again for the issue to be cleared up, and O'Keeffe has passed the matter (with a sigh of relief, no doubt) to junior minister Conor Lenihan, who is in charge of integration.

Let's not hold our breath either way. It's another of those issues which governments would rather went away quietly. Heads down; with any luck, it'll all blow over.

It won't. This child's parents have been given permission to send their daughter to school in a hijab, so there's nothing to stop other Muslims parents demanding the same "rights" from other schools. And if they're refused permission? The Department of Education can't shunt this one off on to individual schools for ever.

"Suppose a child comes here wanting to wear the full veil," asks Mr Sweetman. "Do I say yes or do I say no? And why do I say yes or no?"

It's a classic political fudge to say there are no easy answers, but in this case it's true. Ireland isn't like France, where Muslims in 2004 were outraged by a government decision to ban all religious symbolism -- not only Islamic headscarves, but crucifixes and Jewish Stars of David too -- from state schools. France holds stoutly to its secular Enlightenment values; anti-clericalism, whatever faith the clerics represent, is part of the lifeblood of the culture.

Ireland, by contrast, is not a secular State, but a Catholic one in which the Holy Trinity is invoked in the very first words of the Constitution. That leaves us much more open to a charge of hypocrisy on the issue, since we are seemingly willing to uphold some religious values and traditions but not others. We could say, "We're a Christian country, you can't do that here," but it's not a sentiment with which many people are

going to feel comfortable, since they'd actually rather think of themselves as living in in a modern democratic European state in which religion is purely a matter for the private conscience.

This is the problem. Most Irish people think of the "Holy Trinity" parts of the Constitution as quirky, historical remnants, rather than absolute declarations of loyalty or legality. If we really were a strict Catholic country, after all, we wouldn't have changed the law on divorce and abortion.

But Muslims tend to be much more literal in their interpretation.

For one thing, there is no distinction in Islamic tradition between canon and civic law. The space between these two states of mind is one in which Western societies have become what they are; allowing ambiguity, and trying not to make too much of the inconsistencies which arise from it, is how we muddle along. Muslims, though, don't want our moral fogginess. They want clarity, and it's not possible to provide it.

The uncomfortable truth is that we have no good or logical or perhaps even legally binding reasons for not allowing Muslims to send their children into Irish schools in religious garb, and yet saying no is something we absolutely must do. France reached the same decision because it could see the ghettoisation and radicalisation of its Muslim population, and it didn't take much to foresee the likely consequences in terms of social stability.

To go blindly down this road ourselves without heeding the lessons would be madness. The Muslim population in Ireland remains small, and theirs has been a peaceful presence so far; they in turn have also benefited fully from all the luxuries attendant on being Irish citizens. It's hard to see what anyone in the country stands to gain from encouraging the cementing of separate and competing identities. The usual result is discord -- unless, that is, the supporters of the hijab think Ireland is going to miraculously buck the trend?

There's nothing that can be done to stop Muslim women covering themselves from head to foot, any more than certain Irish women can be forced not to head down to the shops in their pyjamas. But schools are different. Schools should be a neutral space. That's why they have dress codes in the first place.

Ironically, one former pupil of Gorey Community College remembers online how boys in the schools were not allowed to grow their hair lower than their collars, and girls in make-up were sent to the bathroom to wash it off.

Such rigidity has caused resentment among pupils and parents for years; what purpose is served by making boys cut off their flowing locks still defeats me. But at least some of the other rules were there for a reason, namely to promote a sort of equality among the children, so that girls, for example, are not under pressure to turn lessons into fashion parades. But as soon as it's the hijab, former considerations go out the window.

Which is ironic, as experience in schools in the UK shows that many Muslim girls whose parents do not want their daughters to cover themselves can frequently be bullied and made to feel inferior and ashamed by those who do wear the hijab.

And where are all the so-called feminists while this is going on? Keeping their heads down, cowardly as the governments, desperately hoping the matter blows over before they have to make a stand one way or another, and terrified of saying anything critical of Muslims lest they be accused of being culturally insensitive.

- Eilis O'Hanlon