Likewise the American author Yasmine Mohammed, who says she was beaten as a child for not memorising the Koran and was forced to wear a niqab: “The absurdity of #feminists in the West embracing modesty culture while their disempowered sisters in the #Muslim world risk arrest, imprisonment, and worse to free themselves from the #hijab would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic.”

The way that Mend wreaths its hijab campaign in the language of inalienable civil and religious rights isn’t a joke either — but it may fool many ordinary Muslims.

Arguing that a ban on the hijab at primary school would be a breach of the Equality Act 2010, Mend says: “One must ask whether Jewish boys wearing a kippah, or Sikh boys wearing a topknot or a turban, could be considered sexualised too, and whether they will be asked similar questions?” Must one? There is no equivalence. How could a kippah, a topknot or a turban be considered remotely sexualising for boys? None are intended to guard male modesty.

Mend flatly asserts that the right to wear religious clothes “is protected by the Human Rights Act 1998, which guarantees freedom of thought, belief and religion.” A school can, however, stop a pupil from wearing an article of religious clothing if it considers this necessary to the health and safety of the child — as the Chief Inspector of Schools thinks it may be and which in the case of St Stephen’s primary school, the head teacher adjudged it was.

Mend also cites the “UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities” because signatories are required to ensure “minorities can fully exercise fully and effectively all their human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination and in full equality before the law’.”

What Mend doesn’t seem to have grasped is that none of these rights are unqualified, as the Department of Education’s guidance on school uniforms for governors, teachers and local authorities makes clear: “Pupils have the right to manifest a religion or belief but not necessarily at all times, places or in a particular manner.”

There are now some 511 schools across 43 local authority areas with 50 per cent or more pupils from Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds. The Chief Inspector is concerned that some of these schools are in areas beset by community tensions. The DfE guidance says that “where a school has good reason for restricting an individual’s freedoms, for example, the promotion of cohesion and good order in the school, or genuine health and safety or security considerations, the restriction of an individual’s rights to manifest their religion or belief may be justified”.

In other words, the school must balance the rights of individual pupils against the best interests of the wider community — a consideration that was absent from the campaign directed by Mend and some of its “strategic partners” at the head teacher of Britain’s best performing primary school.