“Islam is, of course, the alarming religious issue that will not go away. In the 20th century the world failed to adjust to two major belief systems, nationalism and Marxism. Now we face a similar global challenge from Islam, which opposes Judaism in Israel, Hinduism in India, Buddhism in South East Asia, Christianity in Europe and America and modernism in the whole advanced world.”
William Rees-Mogg in the Times, 26 February 2007
In an editorial comment, Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society denounces the Muslim Council of Britain’s report (pdf) Meeting the needs of Muslim pupils in state schools (you know, the one that has been welcomed by the National Association of Head Teachers). Sanderson characterises the report as the work of “theocrats” whose “demands are never-ending” and who “want to turn our schools into religious minefields where Islamic sensibilities are waiting to trip you up around every corner”. He writes:
“It starts with the MCB’s favourite definition of ‘Islamophobia’ – a definition that brands anyone who has doubts or fears about the ideology of Islam as a racist. ‘Islamophobia’, says the report, ‘is the term currently being used to denote an extreme and abnormal fear and/or aversion to Islam in general and Muslims in particular.’ Neat, isn’t it? If you don’t like Islam you don’t like Muslims, ergo – you’re a racist. The worst excesses of Islam are therefore beyond criticism by anyone who doesn’t want to be branded as racist.”
Well, it’s understandable that Terry Sanderson should be sensitive about accusations of racism. For earlier examples of Sanderson and the NSS lining up with the likes of Robert Kilroy-Silk and Will Cummins in condemning Arab “limb amputators” and “Muslim foreigners”, see here and here. And this admiration is reciprocated by racists. For a recent example of the fascist BNP approvingly quoting Sanderson, see here.
Sanderson continues: “Not all Muslims are as attached to their religion as the MCB document would have us believe. A graph at the beginning of the document claims that 85% of children from Muslim backgrounds regard their religion as ‘extremely important to them’. There is no indication where this figure came from, though.” In fact the MCB document states quite clearly (p.18) that the graph in question – which shows that 99% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils say that religion is important to them – was taken from the 2006 DfES report Ethnicity and Education (pdf here – see p.23).
Like many secular self-styled defenders of the Enlightenment, Sanderson in fact embraces a method that has more in common with pre-Enlightenment values, ignoring and rejecting any objective evidence that doesn’t fit in with his own dogmas.
See also “Was Muslim guidance reasonable?” BBC News, 26 February 2007
Carole Malone serves up another hysterical “Muslims are trying to take over our country” misrepresentation of the MCB’s recommendations concerning provision for young Muslims at school. Basic message is – if you don’t like “our” culture, go back where you came from:
“Just where does the Muslim Council of Great Britain get off demanding that Muslim schoolchildren have their own changing rooms in schools for sport and swimming? They also want single-sex classes for sex education, different assemblies, their own prayer rooms and special canteen staff to prepare halal food.
“Oh yes, and they want girls to be allowed to wear headscarves in all lessons and male pupils to be allowed to grow beards if they want to. Not only that but the Council want the whole exam schedule to be revised so that Muslims don’t have to take exams during Ramadan because they’re weakened by fasting.
“One wonders why the Muslims who agree with these demands bother to live in this country at all – because patently nothing about it suits them. One also wonders what would happen if Christian children living in an Islamic country rocked up to school wearing a skirt above the knee, a bit of make-up and a shirt that showed off a few centimetres of flesh. At a guess they’d be stoned to death.
“I’m sorry but there’s no other country in the civilised world that busts a gut the way Britain does to be inclusive and to promote cultural diversity. But these latest demands from a community that accounts for just three per cent of the British population is a joke. Strikes me the Muslim Council will only ever stop whinging the day Britain becomes an Islamic state. And that’s never going to happen. And if they’re so unhappy with British schools and what goes on in them, why don’t they shove off somewhere that suits them better – like Afghanistan.”
Sunday Mirror, 25 February 2007
For a similar view, see BNP news article, 24 February 2007
On the other hand, the National Association of Head Teachers has welcomed the MCB’s “helpful and useful document“. But what would they know?
A senior Muslim policeman is to accuse several high-ranking officers at Scotland Yard of trying to “take out” members of the National Black Police Association (NBPA), in a book to be published next month.
It is understood that Ch Supt Ali Dizaei will claim that certain colleagues in the Metropolitan Police Force oversaw efforts to use an internal inquiry into claims that he had used drugs, visited prostitutes and taken bribes to incriminate his fellow members of the NBPA, a body established to protect the rights of black and Asian officers.
The book will suggest that some of the Met’s senior officers had been angered by NBPA claims that they had failed to embrace the recommendations of the Macpherson Report into the botched investigation of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
A niqab wearing mum has claimed she was called a “Paki” and “terrorist” in front of her children during her routine school run.
Ruby Sandhu, a Muslim convert was driving in a quiet neighbourhood off Jenner Road in Hackney, East London, on February 7, when she was blocked off by a scaffolding truck. Realising she was late, Sandhu requested the driver move his vehicle, at which point the driver’s passenger got out of the truck and approached her car and demanded she got off her phone.
Sandhu relates to The Muslim News what happened: “I said to him, say ‘please.’” At the time she was on the phone to her friend, when the man demanded she, “Get off the f***ing phone.” Ruby shaken replied, “You racist” To which he replied, “You must be a right old ugly b****, or a smelly Paki. Is that why you wear a mask?”, referring to the niqab that Sandhu wears. Sandhu said she was shaking at that point.
After repeatedly accusing him of racism the accused told her to “stop blowing up, you’re good at blowing up, why don’t you go blow up somewhere else. You’re a terrorist.” Sandhu said what disturbed her most that it was, “done in front of my children. He didn’t care that my kids were in the car.”
“I saw something eerie this week. It wasn’t an apparition exactly, but rather a head-spinning blur of headlines about global jihad that, rather incredibly, began to take on the unmistakable shape of a British old school tie.
“How? Maybe I should start by explaining it was the old school tie that came to mind first in the form of a new publication on British education: namely, a 72-page manifesto (sorry, ‘guidance’) from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) on how British state schools might better accommodate children from the Muslim community, which, according to the 2001 census, makes up 2.7 percent of the British population.
“Did I say ‘better’ accommodate their Muslim pupils? I mean, much, much better accommodate them. In fact, if the British were to adopt half of the MCB’s recommendations for making British schooling Muslim-friendly, they might as well re-issue the 19th-century boy’s school classic as Abdullah Brown’s School Days. At the crux of the Muslim council’s document is a call for special treatment for Britain’s Muslim students that is so special as to reorient the entire British system according to Islamic law….
“And what does all of this have to do with that blur of jihad stories mentioned at the top of the column? First, consider the headlines. In Pakistan, a liberal-minded minister (and wife and mother of two) was assassinated for not wearing a veil. (The shooter reportedly said, ‘I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment’.) Also in Pakistan, barbers received threatening letters warning them against continuing their ‘anti-sharia work’ cutting customers’ beards. (One barber told the Associated Press that two dozen barbers have responded by asking customers not to request shaves.) In London, a Muslim father killed his wife and four daughters (ages 16, 13, 10, and 3) because, according to the Telegraph, ‘he could not bear them adopting a more westernised lifestyle’.
“What is quite eerie about these horrific crimes is the striking fact that the perpetrators, who acted to avenge various infractions of Islamic law, would likely feel right at home in a British state school that had adopted the Muslim Council of Britain’s recommendations. In other words, the outlaws and the advocacy group are working in their different ways to enact Islamic law. Which should teach us all a lesson – if we bothered to learn it.”
Diana West in the Washington Times, 23 February 2007
For further comment on the MCB report, see Rolled Up Trousers and Indigo Jo Blogs.
“The debates on community cohesion and national security (in the wake of September 11) found common cause in the spectre of ‘the enemy within’ – the Muslim community. Over the last five years a virulent and all pervasive form of racism, directed against Arabs and Muslims, has come to permeate British life. The demonisation of Muslims in the media is being reinforced by the application of anti-terror and policing measures which specifically target that community. And a popular racism, with increased attacks on Muslim institutions and people perceived to be Muslim, has ensued.
“In many areas of Britain, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities and newly arrived refugees who happen to be Muslim, are amongst the poorest in the country. In such areas educational provision from pre-school to further studies is lacking, employment opportunities for the young are absent. Note the areas in which the 2001 ‘riots’ took place were those with industries, usually textiles, for which Asian immigrant labour was recruited in the 1950s. Now those industries have died (and/or been exported to the Third World) and with no new investment in the area, the job opportunities for the children and grandchildren of those original immigrants have gone.
“But instead of recognising how the economic decline in such areas, coupled with a long and unbridled racial discrimination over things like housing allocation, has led to exclusion from mainstream society, the excluded communities themselves are being blamed for their isolation. Instead of examining the impact of white flight out of mixed neighbourhoods, Muslims are blamed for self-segregating.
“What is unusual and worrying about the new anti-Muslim racism is that erstwhile liberal-thinking people who would normally eschew any form of personal racism, now find it possible to join in the clamour against Islam and Muslims. And they do so because the idea of a fundamental clash of civilisations – between enlightened, western Christendom on the one hand and benighted, barbaric Islam on the other – has become commonplace and accepted.
“Muslim people as a whole are now being stereotyped not just as terrorists but also as backward, sexist, homophobic bigots whose intolerance and values threaten all our freedoms – of artistic expression, freedom of speech etc and values of equality and fair-play. Such values are now being passed off as something intrinsically British, when they are, in fact, universal. And the challenge to such values, which is carried out all the time, by all different sectors of society, is now being racialised in order to stereotype one set of people – Muslims.”
From In Defence of Multiculturalism, IRR briefing paper by Jenny Bourne
A school accused of using textbooks that called Jews “apes” and Christians “pigs” has been cleared of racism by Government Inspectors.
The Saudi-funded King Fahad Academy, in Bromyard Avenue East, Acton, provides a “satisfactory education” according to Ofsted inspectors, who made a surprise visit to the school last Thursday.
Education ministers had ordered an inquiry into the independent school after allegations of “institutionalised racism” surfaced two weeks ago. But the unannounced visit by inspectors found the school met “all the regulations concerning pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural education”.
Inspectors looked at lesson plans, store rooms and documents, as well as randomly interviewing teachers and 30 pupils aged between 13 and 16. They said the school had been “open and co-operative”.
“Lesson observations, curriculum plans and discussion with pupils indicate that there are good opportunities provided for pupils to learn about their own and other cultures and religions,” the report stated. “Pupils express their opinions freely and well, showing good empathy and tolerance of others’ views. They show good awareness of topical issues and knowledge of British institutions. This reflects the school’s stated aims and ethos.”
Halal meat goes on the menu next week at the Kilburn school where some parents protested at its introduction.
An unsigned newsletter sent on Friday to parents of pupils at Kingsgate School said: “Following parent consultation the governors have decided to provide a halal service at lunchtimes. This service will start on Tuesday, February 27.”
The controversial decision by governors at the Kingsgate Road school to introduce halal meat prompted parents to protest outside the gates two weeks ago. Protester Jacqueline Gomm said: “People say our culture’s not being compromised but it is.”
Gerard Batten, the UK Independence Party’s Euro-MP, has backed Ms Gomm’s campaign, and plans to write to Education Secretary Alan Johnson. “It’s a way of imposing Islamic practices on non-Muslim children, which I find unacceptable,” he said.
A girl aged 12 yesterday lost her bid to be allowed to wear the niqab in class when the high court supported her school’s decision to ban the full-face Muslim veil.
Lawyers for the girl, known in court as X, had argued the Buckinghamshire school’s actions were irrational and infringed her human rights, because it had allowed her three elder sisters to wear the niqab for nine years.
Mr Justice Silber found the veil ban was “proportionate” for identification reasons and because the niqab could jeopardise communication between teacher and pupil. He also accepted the importance of enforcing a school uniform under which girls of different faiths would have a sense of equality and identity within the school’s “ethos”, and the need to avoid peer pressure on other girls to take up the veil.
Last September, when X began wearing the niqab after reaching puberty, she was told it was unacceptable, because teachers felt it would make learning and communication difficult. During the hearing, the judge was told the girl’s sisters all played an active role in the school, that staff had not objected to their niqabs, and that they had achieved high A-level results, disproving the learning impairment argument.
But the court heard they left school some time ago, and since then security concerns had heightened. Of 120 Muslim girls in the 1,300-pupil school, half wear a headscarf or hijab but none wears a niqab.
Lawyers for X, protected by an anonymity order, argued the ban thwarted her “legitimate expectation” she would wear the niqab, and breached her freedom of “thought, conscience and religion” under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The lawyers said last night she and her family were “bitterly disappointed” and considering an appeal.
See also BBC News, 21 February 2007
Hardly a surprising judgement, given Mr Justice Silber’s earlier comments.