Last autumn, a 13-year-old Muslim girl at a French-language high school in Montreal was sent home after being told that the scarf that she was wearing did not conform to the school’s dress code.

Normand Dore, principal of Louis Riel Secondary School, told a local newspaper that he sent the girl home because “distinctive clothing like a hidjab or neo-Nazi regalia could polarise aggression among young people”.

The pupil was transferred to a more accommodating school, but not before ethnic groups including the Muslim Community of Quebec and the Canadian Jewish Congress had protested. One Muslim spokesman said it was shocking that an educator would be so ignorant about the traditions of a major religion and culture.

Scarcely had that incident died down when the parents’ committee at another Montreal school, this one a private institution for girls, ordered that the hidjab be banned, again ostensibly because it broke the school’s dress code.

Dania Baali, a 15-year-old pupil at the private school, said she will be forced to switch schools when the ban comes into effect and has filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission claiming religious discrimination.

The controversy is indicative of how Canada’s ethnic mix is changing. Immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America are dominating the flow of newcomers into Canada and adding to the challenges of integration in the school system.

In Quebec the issue is also linked to the push by nationalists for secession from Canada. The separatists now control Quebec’s provincial government and have jurisdiction over public schools. They reject the policy of multiculturalism promoted by the Canadian government, saying it encourages immigrants to maintain their differences, preferring instead integration of newcomers into Quebec’s French-speaking majority.

Typical of these separatist views were comments by Francois Lemieux, the head of the nationalist St Jean Baptiste Society, who said that the hidjab was incompatible with the values of Quebec society because it was a symbol of the subjugation of women.

“The hidjab defies the values of equality of men and women that we have here in Quebec,” he said.

The provincial government has refused so far to step into the dispute and defend the rights of Muslim women to wear the garment. Bernard Landry, the minister of cultural communities, said religious freedom, like all the others, has its limits, adding “our role is not simply to allow the exercise of these freedoms but also to establish limits”.

Mr Landry was particularly critical of a private Muslim school in Montreal which has required female teachers, even non-Muslims, to wear the hidjab in class.

But the young scarf-wearing Muslim students also have their defenders. The head of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, a Canadian government agency, said it was unacceptable to deny a young girl the right to an education simply because of what she wears to school.

“How can we possibly deny the right to wear the hidjab here, and turn around and defend the right of women not to wear the hidjab in Muslim countries, ” said centre director Edward Broadbent, a former leader of Canada’s socialist-leaning New Democratic Party.