Darul Uloom Islamic High School in Birmingham
A “faith school” in Birmingham.
Holding the children’s attention is a man in Islamic dress wearing a skullcap and stroking his long dark beard as he talks.’You’re not like the non-Muslims out there,’ the teacher says, gesturing towards the window. ‘All that evil you see in the streets, people not wearing the hijab properly, people smoking… you should hate it, you should hate walking down that street.’
He refers to the ‘non-Muslims’ as the ‘Kafir’, an often derogatory term that means disbeliever or infidel.
A snapshot of the worst kind of schooling imaginable – training in hatred of all people who are outside the favored group.
This school is required by its inspectors to teach tolerance and respect for other faiths. But Dispatches’ Lessons in Hate and Violence filmed secretly inside it – and instead discovered that Muslim children are being taught religious apartheid and social segregation.
We recorded a number of speakers giving deeply disturbing talks about Jews, Christians and atheists. We found children as young as 11 learning that Hindus have ‘no intellect’. We came across pupils being told that the ‘disbelievers’ are ‘the worst creatures’ and that Muslims who adopt supposedly non-Muslim ways, such as shaving, dancing, listening to music, and – in the case of women – removing their headscarves, would be tortured with a forked iron rod in the after-life.
It sounds like an imaginary school dated c. 1950 if the Nazis had won the war. It’s hard to come up with anything more poisonous. Given recent history in the UK, it’s terrifying.
‘Salma’ and ‘Ayesha’ are a mother and daughter whose identities we are protecting. Ayesha is now sitting her A-levels but when she was seven she was beaten at her Koran classes. She says: ‘The teacher would sit there, tell me what to read, pronounce it to me – then if I said it wrong he would hit me on the hands with a ruler.’ Her younger brother, only five at the time, would be hit on his feet with a stick.
They dreaded going to those classes but did not tell their mother. Salma eventually withdrew her children from attending madrassas for a completely different reason: she learned that they were being taught an intolerant version of Islam.
‘They were using terms like ‘Kafir’ just because somebody isn’t of the same religion,’ she says, ‘and I’m teaching my children to integrate and not be racist so I pulled my children out.’
Humans can be so ugly. It gets me down.
…
we have a government that, on the one hand, gives grand speeches about tackling the causes of extremism, as David Cameron did last week, while, one the other, encourages local communities to set up their own schools – including faith schools. It’s time to stop these mixed messages. And Muslims can no longer sweep this under the carpet – they need to face up to what is happening behind closed doors.Many warn that if we don’t all tackle this toxic mix of hatred and violence head on, we will reap the whirlwind in years to come.
Very few years in fact. Children can carry bombs in backpacks.
Here he’s only saying what’s in the Koran:
Which probably puts you and your dearest somewhere below cockroaches and maggots. What a beautiful religion!
The whole idea of ‘faith schools’ is bogus. They are designed to foster in-group/out-group psychology, give the student an introduction to a network for useful inside contacts in years to come, and to encourage students devlop a pseudo-tribal identity based on the ‘faith’ and its attendant hocus-pocus.
It is hardly surprising if students are encouraged to hate outsiders, hold them in contempt, and regard them as a threat to their future prosperity and happiness.
But as long as conservative elites insist on having their own elite schools, the way will be clear for supremacist religious organisations to do likewise; no matter how lunatic the stuff they teach.
That’s nasty. Good to see there are also people like ‘Salma”, though.
I read about this earlier and although I have not yet seen the documentary by Channel 4, simply reading about what is going on makes me want to smash my head against a wall. It’s like the warning signs are flashing red over and over, and yet the government seems both oblivious and irresponsible to the dangers of allowing education to fall into the hands of radicals, fundamentalists and barbarians.
Can’t say it better than Jesus &Mo: the qur’an is full of qur’ap (http://www.jesusandmo.net/2011/03/15/verse/).
The only reason why people can be shocked to hear that children are being indoctrinated into hating non-Muslims in Islamic faith schools must be that they’ve never bothered to open the Koran at random and spend about 10 minutes perusing its content, prior to returning to such important tasks as watching reruns of “Celebrity Rehab Bloopers: the outtakes, part II”.
On almost every page, Allah, who turns out to be a rather crappy and repetitive writer, instructs his followers to despise the non-believers.
I can conceive of no version of Islam that can be taught to a youngster without poisoning the kid’s head with disgust for those who aren’t members of the faith. One would have to excoriate the disgusting and demented book beyond recognition.
The Koran amounts to one elongated threat, and once you accept the premise that this monstrosity is the word of God, the knight’s move towards intolerance and violence (and murder) is a perfectly reasonable one to make, as evidenced by the seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers.
The secret filming showed young children being hit by their teacher. I understand an arrest was made during the week after the documentary was first broadcast in the UK.
“I can conceive of no version of Islam that can be taught to a youngster without poisoning the kid’s head with disgust for those who aren’t members of the faith.”
I can, because I witnessed it. Most Muslims I’ve known, like most Christians I’ve Known, are peacable and fairly mild people with a surplus of superstition, too much concern for what people do with their private parts, and a regrettable tendency to enable the extremists among their co-religionists. However, many Muslims are good people, just as many Christians or Buddhists or atheists are good people, and many are assholes. It’s true that the Qu’ran often speaks venemously about non-believers in most of the Medinian Surahs (in the early Meccan ones it basically says “eh, whatever”), but bear in mind that humans can rationalize away just about anything.
On the larger post, oh God, these faith schools are a fucking abomination.
I wonder if there should be some kind of notion of “striking off” teachers just as we have for doctors. Those individuals should not be allowed to teach.
The documentary annoys me. The comments written have annoyed me more, you’ve watched a hour long documentary and you think you’ve got Islam and Muslims figured out? You don’t know the half of it to be honest; a few people can’t represent a religion. I’d love to see a documentary on a churches, temples, gurdwaras or synagogues. I’m sure there are bad aspects of all these places but really doubt that they would make it on air. Don’t just judge on something you know so little about. The documentary although proving sight full is causing more grief then good.
Head teacher Mujahid Aziz said the school had been misrepresented, and the school had nothing to hide. The programme had completely misrepresented the school’s teachings, Mr. Aziz said. Out of two years of teachings, the programme makers had taken a few incidents and shown them again and again, he said. “It’s a clear misrepresentation of what we actually do,” Mr. Aziz claimed. The media seems to be always on us.
I watched this programme and thought it was grossly biased reporting. It stood on the side of the EDL and David Cameron’s witch hunt against all those Muslims from segregated communities and understood nothing about the reality of living in poor communities in the north of England. Since we can’t all live in tolerant cities like Oxford, then we need to take some time to understand what it’s like living amongst impoverished Brits. Impoverished by unemployment, drugs, underage sex, racism and nostalgia for a past before Pakistanis lived here. Would anyone from Oxford want to be mixing with ‘them sort’ of people? Probably not. Why should we force to befriend them, when they hate us and have always hated us. Why not stop blaming Muslims for everything and ask yourself the question – how many Muslims have I bothered to get to know? To tolerate? To understand? Secondly, it is not illegal to smack children. If you mark them, that’s another issue. None of these children were marked. It is their parents who should have the last say, not me, you or Tazneer Ahmad or John Ware BBC Panorama.
Dispatches are clearly trying everything to turn people away from Islam. Why don’t they show the child abuse that goes on in western schools? it was only a few years ago the head masters used to do the same thing, but however Islam is the fastest growing faith in the whole wide world. Whys that I wonder? Maybe because it’s the truth and people what to know the truth.
Dispatches on Channel 4 TV showed in a high praised state funded Muslim school that children as young as 11 are being taught to keep away from Hindu and non-believers, and turned against Jews and Christians. Why no protests about Jewish schools. They preach the same racial intolerance.
The entire old testament is basically the Jews saying we can kill anyone coz we are superior, and the sad thing is they actually did kill everyone they could(they said they did), and the Christians plain old ignore this fact. Jesus cared so much about non Jews he never left Palestine.
The program made me proud of mosque schools. Out of 2000 mosque & Muslims supplementary schools, you were able to spot only two schools and two teachers who were hitting physically students or teaching hate. You kept going for 4 years but had to reshow the same clips several time because you could not collect many to confirm your theory. We will try to improve. The percentage of churches and state schools who sexually abuse children and scar them for life are countless. Your program only creates hate and division within the community when you generalize from two incidents. What a wasted money & years of your team work. Such dangerous dispatches should be banned to protect our community. A report from the NSPCC claims that, “One in four people in the UK, aged between 18 and 24, claims to have experienced severe violence, sexual abuse or neglect as a child”. This illustrates that child abuse is still, regrettably, endemic in British society and is not unique to Muslim institutions. “Such abuse is to be condemned wherever and whenever it takes place and needs a multi-agency approach to tackle it, Muslim schools will continue to put the protection and well-being of our children at the top of the list of priorities, but we can’t do it alone and it is both unreasonable and unjust to focus on Muslim institutions in the way that Dispatches has done.”
A lot of the issues shown happen in a lot of state run schools across all religious and class affiliations but you just want to undermine and misrepresent Islam by parading a few Idiots who obviously haven’t understood Islamic teachings properly but apply cultural practices. Islam is the only system that welcomes people of all colour, creed, class, status, race and background Peace.
This programme seemed to fuel the already existing anti-Muslim campaign that has been running over the last few years. It would be interesting to know who the programme was funded by as the views and the portrayal were extremely biased. In all parts of society there will always be extreme views but instead of tarnishing a whole community with the bracket of anti-integration or anti British, the extremists should be dealt with accordingly. It is a shame that the point of the programme was to expose the unacceptable growing hatred that is being preached within these select schools. Unfortunately instead of tackling this issue the programme only seemed to be hypocritical by in its own way preaching hatred against Muslims and tarnishing a whole community on the actions of an uneducated small minority. Could this be a show of anti –Islamic propaganda in modern day society?There are sinister agendas at work in Western nations and I wonder if they are using Islam to foment trouble?
On the other hand BBC and Channel 4 TVs have never shown that Muslim children have been victim of Paki-bashing for the last 60 years in British schooling. They have been victim of racism, bullying and discrimination. Schools, LEAs and DEF tried their best to hide this kind of abuse under the carpet. Indiscipline, bullying, incivility, binge drinking, drug addiction, gun and knife crimes, teenage pregnancies and abortion are part and parcel of British schooling. Majority of schools encourage young children to have sex and abortions. Muslim community sees the West as decadent and immoral. They will see West as morally bankrupt animals, needing to be trained.
These are the reasons why majority of Muslim parents would like to send their children to Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. Only less than 5% attend Muslim schools and more than 95% keep on attending state and church schools to be mis-educated and de-educated by non-Muslim monolingual teachers. British schooling is the home of institutional racism and British teachers are chicken racist. Non-Muslim teachers are not role models for the Muslim children during their developmental periods. British schooling has been in the process of producing racist young generations, who not only hate each other but also hate those who are different in colour and creed. Due to racism in British schooling, young Muslim children are unable to develop self-esteem and self-confidence. All of them suffer from identity crises. They do not know where they belong. In the name of integration, they find themselves cut off from their cultural roots and are unable to enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. Pakistani children suffer more than others. Majority of them leave schools with low grades. They are unable to enjoy the beauty of Urdu literature and poetry. There is a dire need that bilingual Muslim children should be educated in state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
There are hundreds of state and church schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be opted out as Muslim Academies.
IA
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
One would think that readers of a weblog whose author holds reason, logic and rational thought in high regard would refrain from smugly trotting out personal anecdotes as if they were data.
An example of data would be:
“A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims.”
As far as I know, there are no comparative polls done in predominantly Muslim countries, but something tells me that the denizens of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen do not take a more lenient view of these matters.
Happy blandishments about the many nice Muslims a person can observe from a safe distance do little to dispel the notion that Islam is a prison into which infants are thrown, and its chains shackle the young to the ignorance and barbarity of 6th century Arabia.
One can only leave this prison at the risk of provoking the murderous rage of one’s neighbors and even one’s own family. At a minimum, immediate and instantaneous social defenestration is guaranteed for committing the crime of independent thought.
That many Muslims are capable of ignoring the reprehensible instructions of Allah says a lot about the innate kindness and compassion of human beings and changes absolutely nothing about the vileness of Islamic doctrine and its horrific consequences.
Or not.
Of course humans can rationalize away just about anything, but they can also rationalize away the wrong things and hang on like grim death to things they would do better to rationalize away. We can’t just shrug off the instructions to Be Evil in holy books merely because it’s possible to ignore such instructions.
@Iftikhar Ahmad The documentary annoys me.
And that is about the only true thing in your comment. The rest is lifted pretty much directly fromMuslim apologetics web sites.
The fact is that Islam is a homophobic, misogynistic, patriarchal, anti-semitic religion with roots based in 7th century Arabic tribal culture and it has not changed in the least since that time.
In case you think I’m picking on the religion of Islam specifically, I consider the current state of Islam to be comparable to Christianity in the 14th century, the difference being that Christianity has been rendered far less toxic by 700 hundred or so years of renaissance and enlightenment thinking.
Islam has gone through no such transformation and it is has no role to play in the modern world in it’s current form.
I suggest you read The Trouble With Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith by Irshad Manji and Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Note that Ayaan Hirsi Ali now lives under armed guard and was forced to abandon the Netherlands because of threats on her life by Muslims, aided and abetted by Muslims much like you, who if they did not approve of this vile behaviour, tacitly supported it by not calling out the perpetrators.
I see by your comment a common thread that Irshad Manji pointed out in her book, there is a victim mentality in the Muslim world, your problems are always the fault of someone else, the jews, the christians, the crusaders (what’s up with that ? there have been no crusaders for over 700 years) the liberal media, the americans etc., ad nauseum.
The fact of the matter is, the group most responsible for the problems that Muslim face are other Muslims.
So grow up, stop your whining, face the fact that you are your are your own worst enemy and start being one of those Muslims that stands up and publicly says that the more radical elements of Islam do not represent you and mainstream Islam.
And by the way, it’s not OK to “smack” a child, even if you don’t leave a mark. What sort of sociopath are you anyway ?
Ooh, lets sign these guys up for an interfaith workshop!
At least there can be little doubt that they have faith.
Ophelia, I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying WE should ignore the evils of religious text; I’m ALL FOR pointing them out. I’m merely saying that many decent Muslims find ways around them and manage to be good or even outstanding human beings despite the awful shit in their holy texts (which is maybe worse than you might think; most Sunnis are more into the hadith than the Qu’ran, and the hadith makes the Qu’ran look like The Humanist Manifesto by comparison).
On the bright side, just across the road from the school is the Ambala Sweet Centre, purveyors of excellent spicy pastries. Recommended if you’re ever in Brum.
A vicar’s wife wrote about the area not very long ago – she wasn’t too keen. It’s a bit different from Seattle – unless Seattle’s changed a lot since I was there last.
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3650/full
“On the whole, I am glad to return. I shan’t miss some locals’ assumptions that, being a white woman, if I was outside after dark, as I occasionally was, usually to walk the few metres between my house and the church, I must be a prostitute eager to give them a blow job. I shan’t miss the abuse my priest husband received: the daubing of “Dirty white dogs” in red paint on the church door, the barrage of stones thrown at him by children shouting “Satan”.”
I guess from a non-religious perspective the sons of the Church and the sons of the Prophet taking a pop at each other could be seen as a win-win.
Steve Oberski – “What sort of sociopath are you anyway ?”
I imagine Iftikhar Ahmad could reply “One with more children than you have“.