Last week, some Muslims felt suitably victorious after overturning a hijab ban on young girls at a primary school.

St Stephen's primary school in Newham, east London hit the headlines after governors and the headteacher looked to ban pupils from wearing the hijab.

That decision, along with curbs on children fasting during Ramadan, did not go down well with many parents. They said they had not been consulted and said the decision was infringing on their religious rights.

Arif Qawi, the chair of Governors crassly had made out that the hijab was in some way leading to the ‘Islamification’ of the country.

The school's headteacher, Neena Lall, had supported the change in a move to make pupils ‘more integrated.’ Soon after Qawi resigned and we as Muslims backed by pressure group MEND could rejoice in the fact that we had tackled institutional Islamophobia.

Here was a school which was named the best primary school in the country under the leadership of head teacher Neena Lall.

All this though was forgotten as our frenzied need to bring those who would dare to tell us as a community what to do.

But it is what happened next which I focus on now.

Our reaction stank. Sorry, but there is no other word to describe it.

From Muslim commentators, bloggers, writers and interest groups we realised we were correct and we wanted payback.

The vile and almost shocking level of abuse was directed towards Sikh Neena Lall.

I know full well we would be a little more concerned had she in fact been a Muslim who was targeted by those of another religion.

Should someone be compared to Hitler because ones makes an ill-formed decision of this nature? Really?

We even had Salim Mulla, a former mayor of Blackburn with Darwen and a serving councillor who branded Ms Lall ‘evil’ and ‘racist.’ Privately I know of folk applauding such comments.

And this was just one of the more publicised levels of abuse towards a woman, a head teacher and public servant.

It is clear in the present toxic social environment the decision and the school has been used by opposing sides to try to justify their own standpoints.

Discussing Islamic cultural issues in Britain of this nature becomes polarised and you are either 'with us or against us'.

On the one side you have the supposed secularists urging us to believe that British society is being eroded by us bending over backwards to accommodate Muslim practices.

Whilst on the other side we have Muslims rallying to challenge anyone or anybody who is not ‘Muslim enough’ to speak on our behalf.

We reacted with the same fire and fury with which we accuse others of when faced with issues relating to Islam.

We all speak highly of the ideals of our religion…pity then that we find it so difficult to put these ideals into practice when we need to most.