Ah the joys of religious state schools in the UK. The Daily Mail (sorry) reports that the government ordered four Islamic schools to shut down after bad Ofsted reports, but they appealed to the courts so pending the outcome they remain open. Oh well, it’s only students.

One allegedly taught girls that men can beat their wives. Another distributed leaflets saying music is an ‘act of the devil’.

They could continue operating for months, if not years, after launching legal appeals against closure. The four fee-paying independent establishments include a girls’ boarding school, Jamia al-Hudaa in Nottingham, that was ordered to close last month after Ofsted found books in the library by individuals banned from entering Britain.

Ministers told the 237-pupil school it must close its boarding facilities immediately and stop accepting new pupils.

But the school said “shan’t” and is fund-raising for a legal appeal. But this is a state school, not a private school. But religious schools can be state schools in the UK, and this is the dog’s breakfast that results.

One former student says she is disgusted that it can continue to operate, saying it was ‘like a prison’ where girls were isolated from the outside world. She says girls were taught they can be beaten and raped by their husbands, in order ‘to make Allah happy’ and that music is the voice of the devil.

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Several Islamic schools were ordered to close by the Department for Education after a series of critical Ofsted reports. But the four appealed to the courts, which allows them to continue operating until a ruling is made.

At Darul Uloom in Birmingham, inspectors found a large number of leaflets ‘containing highly concerning and extremist views’. It remains open five years after concerns were first raised, when a preacher was filmed making racist remarks about Hindus and ranting that ‘disbelievers are the worst creatures’.

They provide a first-person account of life at one school:

A Former pupil at Jamia al-Hudaa school in Nottingham says she was taught that women can be raped and beaten by their husbands and that music is the voice of the devil.

Sara Adam – not her real name – says the girls’ boarding school was ‘like a prison’ where girls are ‘entirely isolated from the outside world’ and simply ‘trained to become subservient housewives’.

She said: ‘We were not taught geography, history or music and in art we just did knitting. We were banned from drawing anything with eyes.’

It might as well be a school for slaves.

‘There was no sex education and we were taught that evolution was a belief of devil worshippers and atheists. Most of our day was spent doing Islamic studies.’

Miss Adam, who does not want her face pictured for fear of retribution from within her community, left Jamia al-Hudaa more than a decade ago. But the school, which has 237 pupils, continues to operate under the same leadership, despite whistleblowers repeatedly raising concerns.

Last month Aliyah Saleem, now 27, told the Mail how she was expelled from the school for owning a disposable camera.

She said she was taught that Jews and Christians ‘make God angry’.

Miss Adam recalled how when she was a pupil, two girls aged 14 and 16 were put into solitary confinement for three weeks after teachers suspected they were lesbians.

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Teachers would carry out regular spot-checks of the girls’ dormitories, and ‘lift up our mattresses and look underneath like they do in prisons’.

‘They found my personal diary,’ Miss Adam said. ‘I was told off by teachers because in the summer holidays before I joined the school, I wrote that I fancied a boy I saw on the Disney Channel.

‘The teacher said it was forbidden to like boys at my age – especially if they are “kuffars” [a derogatory term to describe non-Muslims].’

Her diary was eventually returned with a third of the pages torn out.

Miss Adam said: ‘We were basically trained to be mindless zombies who submit to their husbands. I was lucky because, after calling my parents every night in tears, they eventually pulled me out of the school.

‘It is disgusting that a school like this is still open – and my fear is there are many more.’