The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) recently announced that schools can ban pupils from wearing full-face veils on the grounds of security, safety or effective learning.

The guidance states that efforts should be made to accommodate religious clothing, but that teachers are to judge whether the ability to see a child's face is necessary for them to teach effectively and safely.

'If a pupil's face is obscured for any reason the teacher may not be able to judge their engagement with learning or secure their participation in discussion and political activities,' the guidance states. School heads are being told to consult parents before going ahead with any ban.

The Chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, Massoud Shadjareh, said he was 'dismayed' by the DfES guidance. 'Successive ministers dealing with education issues have failed to give proper guidance when requested by human rights campaigners about schools' obligations regarding religious dress, including the head scarf.

'To now proceed to issue guidance against Muslim communities is simply shocking,' he added.

The DfES said it was not ordering or advising head teachers to ban the veil, simply confirming that they have the ability to do so if they wish, so long as they carry out proper consultation.

The announcement by the government is the latest intervention in the controversy surrounding Islamic clothing.

In March 2006, the House of Lords overturned an appeal court ruling that a Muslim teenager’s human rights were violated when she was banned from wearing a Jilbab, a loose, full-length garment to school. Cherie Booth QC acting for the seventeen year old argued that banning her from wearing the Jilbab breached her rights to education and to manifest her religion.

A few months later, Aishah Azmi, a Muslim teaching assistant, was sacked after refusing to remove her veil in school if a man was present. Mrs Azmi lost an employment tribunal case after refusing a male teacher's request that she remove the veil when helping children in her role as a bilingual support assistant at a Church of England junior school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

At around the same time, the leader of the Commons, Jack Straw, revealed in an article for his local paper that he had usually asked Muslim women to remove face veils when they came to see him at his constituency surgeries. Mr Straw argued that the veils made communication difficult. Contributing to the debate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said that he had no problem with Muslim women wearing a veil but that there could be questions of practicality.

The debate is about more than clothing, of course.  As so often it is those cultural artefacts - clothes, food, jewellery - seemingly so insignificant but symbolically so powerful, that are a microcosm of a bigger debate.

To what the extent should signs of religious affiliation be permitted in the public square? How can we balance particular identities with the need to maintain some sense of communal identity? Should we even try? What, if any, limits should there be on my freedom to dress (or eat, or behave) as I wish?

In an article for the Spectator in February 2007, the philosopher John Gray wrote, 'The attempt to create a liberal monoculture, which many commentators have urged, founders on the fact of diversity. The fantasy of a morally cohesive society has inspired some of the worst types of repression… The reality is that we cannot hope to share many of our fundamental values. But we can still rub along together, if we can relearn the habit of tolerance.'

He may be right, but it sounds a little like a culture of despair, not least when the particular demands of the classroom - or the constituency surgery? - force upon us the need to create 'morally cohesive' settings.

Even if (as unlikely as it seems) we were suddenly to reach a consensus on the issues of the Hijab, the Jilbab and the Burkha, in school, surgery or society, the real question would remain. How should we balance act the rights of freedom and with demands of responsibility, the liberties of individual with the cohesion of society, the 'me' with the 'us'?

What do you think? Join the debate!

Paul Woolley is Director of Theos