Five Chinese Crackers: More bullsh*t from the Express
Thanks to Osama Saeed, a comprehensive rebuttal of the garbage on the front page of yesterday's Daily Spew regarding the MCB's report (PDF) about how British Muslim pupils might be better served by the schools paid for out of their parents' taxes. As Osama notes, the BNP web site doesn't even bother to comment when linking to the Spew's article.
Also, Harry's Place has its own response to the report, which raises supposed scholarly disagreement as to whether Muslim female modesty requires the wearing of a headscarf. He doesn't mention any Muslim scholar who has said otherwise. Of course, there are Muslims who practise to various degrees, and there are those who believe, pray and do not eat pork but do not wear the headscarf because, in their village back home, they didn't wear it. However, the headscarf, or coverings beyond this, are part of the culture in large parts of the Muslim world and the Islamic scholarly body overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, concurs that a head-covering is necessary for a woman. The MCB is not demanding that schools enforce this on women themselves, or tolerate anyone harrassing girls and women who do not wear it for one reason or another. As with the prescriptions on art, dancing and physical education, they merely state the needs of the strictly religious - which is a sizeable group, if a minority, within the body of those originating in the Muslim world. Any teacher working in an area where there is a large Muslim community is likely to come into contact with many such families.
Furthermore, David T considers Arabic to be a language of primarily religious importance, and of less value in the world than a European language or Mandarin. However, it is widely-known that the teaching of any foreign language is of value to someone, because knowing more than one language makes it easier to learn others (for example, it is how people normally learn grammar). It is also a language of classical literature and one of the world's major languages, with more native speakers than French or German (possibly more than both combined), and is of considerable value to anyone who might end up doing business in Dubai. In terms of its value to Muslim children, I would say that it should be taught in preference to Urdu or Bengali if a British Muslim identity is to be fostered.
DT's conclusion is a familiar one, namely that the MCB is "significantly a Mawdudist organisation" connected with the Islamic Foundation, which "was established by Khurshid Ahmad, a senior figure in the clerical fascist party, Jamaat-i-Islami" and whose bookshop "sells the work of the clerical fascists, Sayyid Qutb and 'Imam Shahid' Hassan al Banna who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, and also by their south asian counterpart, Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi". The IF also runs the Markfield complex, which provides valued services to the Muslim community not only in Leicester but also across the country, including the New Muslims' Project and the Markfield Institute of Higher Education, whose courses are accredited by the University of Loughborough. It is reasonable to assume that not everyone involved in either venture are Mawdudists or that anything coming from an organisation with a Mawdudist background can be dismissed for that reason. My observation is that those Muslims involved in the Islamic party-political movements (HT etc) are less strict about outward observances such as hijab than those who are strongly attached to purely religious tendencies such as the Tablighi Jama'at and the Bareilawi group (many of whose adherents are fervently anti-Mawdudist). If the MCB's leadership had consisted of such people, its recommendations regarding education could barely have been different.
David T: Some of this Guidance is just a little odd. For example, in the section which deals with the provision of prayer rooms in schools, the MCB counsels:
'Care should be taken to avoid allocating rooms that may have displays with distracting imagery, such as posters of the human body in a science laboratory.'
Or, take this:
'In general, participation in swimming is an acceptable activity whilst fasting. However, for many pupils this activity may prove to be an issue, as the potential for swallowing water is very high.'
Still, these aren't serious objections. Religious people often have strange but essentially innocuous beliefs which it doesn't do to mock.
If he's not mocking, why raise these points?
Anyway he also says:
When I was a student at a liberal school in London, muslim boys - even the religious ones - in my class did not think to ask for the creation of a prayer room: although no doubt, one would have been granted. I don't think that a state school is an appropriate place for religious observance.
I have to raise a confession here. I was practising at school but didn't have the guts to ask for a room. I was shy, but also heard of so many runins that other Muslims had with their school authorities when it came to this issue. So guidance for schools in this regard can only be a good thing.
As for T's points about hijab, the MCB's document is a sum total of the views of its members. Anyway, if some girls don't want to wear the hijab, there's not much point in putting in a document - they just don't wear the hijab!
I don't wish to scaremonger but I wonder if this kind of a debate is just a precursor to the narrative which will emerge soon about people being "uncomfortable" with the hijab. Just like as with the niqab now, it will also be argued on the grounds of whether its needed theologically within Islam or not.
I thought I couldn't be shocked any more, but this front page tirade of lies was something else.
Looking at the Express website, I followed through to the discussion on whether Muslims should tell "us" how to run "our" schools. Aside from the usual racist stuff about people going back to their own countries, the following comment was worthy:
"I have read this article and, curious, I read the MCB's report. I was surprised to find that the MCB report contains NOTHING about forcing children/schools to do anything whatsoever. Where are these 'Taliban-style conditions' you write about in the report? Under your posting rules, you won't publish anything that incites people to commit a crime but you will print a misleading front-page story that incites fear, suspicion and animosity."
Stuart McCorquodale, Pontyclun, S Wales
Another non-story really full of gross distortions and downright lies.
Maybe it is a distraction from another perhaps more serious story that people may or may not be aware of which is London's children running around with guns and shooting each other.
I certainly know which I'm more concerned about considering my own children live in London.
The MCB paper IS a religiously conservative take on things. And the dance thing, for example, is not a requirement of the 'strictly religious' but of Deobandism (I doubt Barelwis agree with this, since trad Sufism includes dancing). The problem is, it is now impossible to say, in a sensible way, this is a partisan document which leans towards revivalist interpretations of Islam and doesn't take Muslim diversity sufficiently into account, because the looney racist right and Islamophobic left have mis-used these arguments to attack what is largely a pretty sensible set of recommendations from the MCB. Yet again, what Islamophobes have done is close down debate within the Muslim community in a manner which has the potential to be divisive. That's 1:0 to them, if you ask me!
I really disliked the "our schools" - What more right do these toffs have to the State sector than Muslims? Are we not just as British as they ?
'I really disliked the "our schools" - What more right do these toffs have to the State sector than Muslims? Are we not just as British as they?' asks Julaybib above. Well, to be frank, no, you're not if you think these demands are valid and useful. If you are truly British - in that you think British, strive to integrate into Britain instead of having your own little Islamic bubble quite separate from British culture - then, yes, I'd say you were British. Do you wish to be British? Then integrate, and don't push for these ridiculous sops to superstition. How do you expect teachers to cope with all the things they have to cope with while all the time wondering if they're going to trip over a Muslim sensibility as they walk downt the corridor? How wrongheaded and ridiculous to expect British schools to pander to a superstition that demands, inter alia meat killed in a manner that is repugnant to most of us, the absence of anatomical drawings in rooms that might double as 'prayer rooms', special bathing arrangements, time for prayer, special arrangements during Ramadan ... The list goes on. (And I do have the PDF of the report - I saw the Express story only after someone had linked to it in another blog. And here, anyway, I'm not talking of the Express story, but of the situation itself.) I do hope the government dumps this silly nonsense straight into the wastepaper basket.
What a none event. The launch of a report by the MCB on integrating Islamic thought and practices into a modern educational system was marked by a deafening silence.
Quite rightly it was virtually ignored by the majority. After all this is the 21st century and the advanced countries in the world have moved on. The MCB is correctly perceived by most as an anachronism, much as the mutterings of spokespersons from the established religions.
Our nation is great because we don't segregate on the basis of sex. We naturally assume that all individuals have a right to education and opportunities in life.
We are not prudish about our bodies. Why do believers in Islam appear to think that the human body is dirty.
All that time devoted to praying and learning the Koran by rote ( and not in the classical arabic ). What a waste of time.
The real purpose of the MCB is to keep their own in check in the state sector. They mustn’t be influenced by the satanic ways of the infidels. They really must not think for themselves. They must never question the word of their god and the sayings etc of their prophet. They must conform and must never leave the religion, or else.
They understand fully that education is not only the transfer of received knowledge, but also the development of tools for independent thinking etc. This is dangerous to any religion, and particularly so to isalm. Woman in particular must never rise above being a mother, and must never have dominion over a man in the public domain ( pace that recent murder of a female minister in Pakistan and the response of the murderer ).
Why have I bothered to post on this site? Why not.
Why indeed. What's your point? All I see is a grouping of hyoptheses.
Heres the problem.
State schools are aimed to promote equality and if one faith wants alot of alterations all faiths will.
So what we could end up is a state school where everyone is so different that everyone would be segmented and cohesion wouldn't be able to play its role.