By Jawad Mazhar, Worthy News Special Correspondent reporting from Pakistan
MIANWALI, PAKISTAN (Worthy News) -- A talented Christian student has been denied admission to Science studies at a girls high school in Pakistan because the Muslim school principal regards her as "too ugly" to participate, her father said.
Abdullah Masih said the female principal of the Government Girls’ Mian Shahbaz Sharif High School in the Pakistani city of Mianwali told his 14-year-old daughter Uzma Noreen: "Your ugly face is not fit for Science studies."
The principal, who is also a science teacher and known only as Sofia, declined to discuss the situation in details, but made clear she had not changed her opinion about the Christian sudent.
DAUGHTER DEVASTATED
Masih, 42, told Worthy News and its news partner BosNewsLife that his daughter was devastated. "Besides humiliating my daughter" the principal "also wrecked her educational career,” he added in a telephone interview.
He said his daughter was punished for her Christian faith as she apparently scored most points of students participating in "the final examination of class eight" a key condition for Science studies in class nine.
"Her name was at the top of the list of students to whom admission in Science subjects was granted...Now she is rejected merely for being Christian," Masih claimed. "She was also told she is an ugly Christian girl and therefore her face does not appear to be fitting for Science studies
in higher classes."
This is no isolated incident, rights groups suggest. In recent months and years, several Christian students have reportedly been forced to leave educational institutions in Pakistan because of their faith.