Sky News investigation finds UK school promoting "extreme Islam"

Sky News wrote:Leaflets available at a Muslim school warn against adopting British customs and watching TV - and say women should not go to work.

A private Muslim school in Yorkshire is promoting an extreme form of Islam, claiming that Jews are engaged in a global conspiracy to take over the world and that adopting British customs is forbidden.

The Islamic Tarbiyah Academy in Dewsbury teaches 140 primary school children in an after-school madrasa and runs full-time classes for over-16s and adults.

Mufti Zubair Dudha, the centre's founder and head, is a respected cleric from the orthodox Deobandi sect which is thought to control half of all mosques and madrasas in the UK.

In one leaflet Mr Dudha quotes the Protocols of Zion, an early 20th Century anti-Semitic forgery, which claims to prove Jewish people are engaged in a global conspiracy.

He claims that colourful pictures, films, magazines and sporting celebrities are part of the conspiracy to "poison the thinking and minds" of young Muslim people.

"The various forms of distractions have been successful to considerable extent in achieving their objectives," he wrote.

Other leaflets and newsletters, some of which are distributed to Deobandi mosques, say all mixed-sex institutions are evil, warn Muslims not to adopt British customs, ban the watching of TV, and tell women not to go out to work and to be fully covered before leaving the house.

In a section on jihad he tells Muslims they should be prepared to "expend ... even life" to create a world organised "according to Allah's just order".

Deobandis believe in a highly orthodox spiritual version of Islam and Mr Dudha also produces leaflets condemning terrorism and advocating non-violence.

Dewsbury has a history of disaffected youth becoming radicalised and was home to Britain's youngest suicide bomber, its youngest convicted terrorist, and one of the 7/7 bombers.

Keith Vaz, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, told Sky News he believes the centre's teachings are dangerous.

"After what we have seen in Paris and in Brussels and the way in which the Muslim community has come out so strongly in favour of peace and tolerance, I think these kinds of leaflets serve no purpose but to divide in a poisonous and totally reckless way," he said.

MPs are currently investigating radicalisation and the Government said last year that it intends to regulate madrasas.

The Department for Education told us: "These serious allegations are under investigation. While it would be inappropriate to comment on the specific investigations of these institutions, we are clear that extremism has no place in our society and we are determined to protect children from it."

But in a statement, Mr Dudha told Sky News: "It saddens me greatly that certain extracts from our publications have been taken and misrepresented to link the Academy with extremism.

"We fully believe in the importance and need of integration whilst being able to practise our faith."

http://news.sky.com/story/1670528/expos ... reme-islam

A worrying development.

Woo faith schools

Religious groups should not be allowed to run schools.

The Islamic Tarbiyah Academy in Dewsbury teaches 140 primary school children in an after-school madrasa and runs full-time classes for over-16s and adults.

I wonder if anything can be done if as it seems it's only a school for religious learning. (I am assuming those 140 children attend non-religious schools during the day.)

Remember guys, things are always better run by the private sector.

Skarjo wrote:Remember guys, things are always better run by the private sector.

This is the big part of it all, for me. And the thing that keeps getting overlooked.
Basically - although this is incredibly shitty news and I hate it, and I'm honestly not trying to use this as an opportunity for government-bashing or political-points-scoring - the Conservatives are reaping what they sow here.

Their still-maintained concept of 'austerity' (despite evidence clearly pointing that the depth to which we've sunk has been entirely unnecessary and financially damaging - and hey, just look at that debt!) and their ongoing ideological cuts (you can't possibly argue against the fact they're ideologically-driven; examine the cuts made to the disabled compared with the lack of momentum on closing tax evasion and their pitiful 'deals' with prolific tax evaders and then tell me "we're all in this together" with a straight face) has led to the ridiculous situation we face now, whereby the government is actually advocating that all schools be academies.

Of course, with cuts across the board, then local authorities aren't going to be able to fight to retain control over local education.
With our head of state head of our 'national' church, separation of church and state is further away than ever.
And with their handy tax-exempt status, who's going to have both the financial inclination and the motivation to wrest control of education away from local authorities? Religious groups, that's who.

But of course, this naive idea that within the decade every English schoolboy and schoolgirl would benefit from an idyllic schooling in a picturesque church-led independent primary or secondary, is clearly bollocks, because it's not just Christian groups who can now write their tax-free cheques and exert dangerous influence over our nation's young people, filling their heads with nonsense about sky deities and the role of women and gender and human sexuality and how the world would be better if we bow to received wisdom of those in power thousands of years ago. It's also the more 'scary' religious nutjobs from other faiths - Islam of course, but there's kids unaccounted for apparently attending illegal Jewish schools too. And although 'extreme Islam' will always generate more hits/clicks and therefore more ad revenue for the more Islamaphobically-predisposed 'big' English media sites and papers, I don't doubt that there will be instances of extreme Catholicism, extreme Anglicanism, extreme Judaism, extreme Sikhism, etc. and I'm sure that before long we'll see the media reporting these too.

It should be enshrined in law that education is subject to strict rules, one of which needs to be that religion is taught in our schools only from an academic point of view i.e. religious studies as a subject - NOT that subjects, curricula, or schools base their teachings from a religious point of view. All education must be from an entirely secular point of view. If this is breached punitive measures should be in place against the school groups.

And of course, it would be far, far better if schools were properly nationalised, so that they can be run exclusively for the benefit of their pupils, and therefore the nation, as opposed to for financial gain, or for the benefit of shareholders, or whatever. As per the West Wing and the 'silver bullet' quote.

KK wrote:

Sky News wrote:Leaflets available at a Muslim school warn against adopting British customs and watching TV - and say women should not go to work.

A private Muslim school in Yorkshire is promoting an extreme form of Islam, claiming that Jews are engaged in a global conspiracy to take over the world and that adopting British customs is forbidden.

The Islamic Tarbiyah Academy in Dewsbury teaches 140 primary school children in an after-school madrasa and runs full-time classes for over-16s and adults.

Mufti Zubair Dudha, the centre's founder and head, is a respected cleric from the orthodox Deobandi sect which is thought to control half of all mosques and madrasas in the UK.

In one leaflet Mr Dudha quotes the Protocols of Zion, an early 20th Century anti-Semitic forgery, which claims to prove Jewish people are engaged in a global conspiracy.

He claims that colourful pictures, films, magazines and sporting celebrities are part of the conspiracy to "poison the thinking and minds" of young Muslim people.

"The various forms of distractions have been successful to considerable extent in achieving their objectives," he wrote.

Other leaflets and newsletters, some of which are distributed to Deobandi mosques, say all mixed-sex institutions are evil, warn Muslims not to adopt British customs, ban the watching of TV, and tell women not to go out to work and to be fully covered before leaving the house.

In a section on jihad he tells Muslims they should be prepared to "expend ... even life" to create a world organised "according to Allah's just order".

Deobandis believe in a highly orthodox spiritual version of Islam and Mr Dudha also produces leaflets condemning terrorism and advocating non-violence.

Dewsbury has a history of disaffected youth becoming radicalised and was home to Britain's youngest suicide bomber, its youngest convicted terrorist, and one of the 7/7 bombers.

Keith Vaz, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, told Sky News he believes the centre's teachings are dangerous.

"After what we have seen in Paris and in Brussels and the way in which the Muslim community has come out so strongly in favour of peace and tolerance, I think these kinds of leaflets serve no purpose but to divide in a poisonous and totally reckless way," he said.

MPs are currently investigating radicalisation and the Government said last year that it intends to regulate madrasas.

The Department for Education told us: "These serious allegations are under investigation. While it would be inappropriate to comment on the specific investigations of these institutions, we are clear that extremism has no place in our society and we are determined to protect children from it."

But in a statement, Mr Dudha told Sky News: "It saddens me greatly that certain extracts from our publications have been taken and misrepresented to link the Academy with extremism.

"We fully believe in the importance and need of integration whilst being able to practise our faith."

http://news.sky.com/story/1670528/expos ... reme-islam

A worrying development.

Careful, KK. Next thing you know your legitimate concern will be interpreted as 'racism'. Never mind, I'm sure this is just a one-off, one bad apple and all that. I'm sure it's not the case that Islam - even that cuddly, friendly 'moderate' Islam that I'm sure these children are being taught - really wants to stand apart, refuse to integrate and embrace our western values of freedom and equality. To suggest such a thing would surely be totally offensive and, of course, as we all know, in this multicultural nirvana we have created it simply couldn't happen. It can't, right...? ... ...Right..?

Cal wrote:I think this is a bad thing.

I'm just saving you time before you wear out your keyboard.

Actually, Cal, I think you'll find the lefty loony liberals!!!111 are almost unanimously against religious schooling, and indeed against private schooling in general.

I think all schools should be nationalised and taught to a strict, standardised curriculum. A child's education is too important to leave in the hands of religious nutcases (of any creed), private corporations with a profit motive, or ineffective 'community charities' made up of busy-bodies and bored housewives.

Given no-one had even hinted about thinking this was a 'racism thing' before Cal came along, it makes you wonder, doesn't it, that perhaps Cal doth protest too much?

As a product of the denominational school system I couldn't be any more in favour of abolishing the whole thing.

Karl wrote:Actually, Cal, I think you'll find the lefty loony liberals!!!111 are almost unanimously against religious schooling, and indeed against private schooling in general.

Well I'm certainly not against private (what we call public) schooling. I believe in the excellence of the public school system in the UK - the results speak for themselves. If parents want to and can afford to send their kids to exclusive private schools that's their absolute right. I'm only against religious schools when they are clearly nothing less than Madrassas in the case of Islamic schools, or creationist propaganda fronts in the case of very few Christian schools (in fact - any in the UK at all..?). I can't speak to Jewish schools as I have no knowledge of them or how they operate.

Karl wrote:I think all schools should be nationalised and taught to a strict, standardised curriculum.

Of course you do. No choice for anyone! Choice bad! And (to quote Melanie Phillips) 'all shall have prizes' amirite?

Karl wrote:A child's education is too important to leave in the hands of religious nutcases (of any creed), private corporations with a profit motive, or ineffective 'community charities' made up of busy-bodies and bored housewives.

I'd argue a child's education is far too important to leave in the hands of an anonymous, indifferent, one-size-fits-all local authority who couldn't care less about individual pupil achievement and operates from a dogmatic, heavily politicised agenda against the interests of the brightest and the best. The loss of the Grammar School system was a politically-motivated tragedy for an entire generation of bright kids.

Karl wrote:Given no-one had even hinted about thinking this was a 'racism thing' before Cal came along, it makes you wonder, doesn't it, that perhaps Cal doth protest too much?

Christ.

Cal wrote:creationist propaganda fronts in the case of very few Christian schools (in fact - any in the UK at all..?)

Many, unfortunately.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... hreat.html

Cal wrote:

Karl wrote:I think all schools should be nationalised and taught to a strict, standardised curriculum.

Of course you do. No choice for anyone! Choice bad!

Well done on reducing this argument to the absolute bare minimum.

It's got nothing to do with choice - it becomes all about privilege. Of course the wealthy can "choose" to send their children to better schools, with better-equipped teachers (who of course are better-paid). But there's no such choice for Johnny Poor, even though his son has the potential to breeze through a PHD at Oxford but will end up doing nothing of the sort because they couldn't afford to go to any school other than the gooseberry fool local.

Unless of course they had 'chosen' to be wealthier.

Cal wrote:I'd argue a child's education is far too important...

No, clearly you don't place enough importance on a child's education, because otherwise you wouldn't come out with stuff like:

Cal wrote:If parents want to and can afford to send their kids to exclusive private schools that's their absolute right

If in your opinion, the 'right' of the wealthy to use their wealth to gain access to a higher standard of service for something like education (something that should be an absolutely universal right), is more important than everyone having equal and free access to a universal high standard, then clearly your interest is not the child's education, but sticking up for the rights of the rich, maintaining the status quo, etc.

easier to remember joke name wrote:

Cal wrote:

Karl wrote:I think all schools should be nationalised and taught to a strict, standardised curriculum.

Of course you do. No choice for anyone! Choice bad!

Well done on reducing this argument to the absolute bare minimum.

It's got nothing to do with choice - it becomes all about privilege. Of course the wealthy can "choose" to send their children to better schools, with better-equipped teachers (who of course are better-paid). But there's no such choice for Johnny Poor, even though his son has the potential to breeze through a PHD at Oxford but will end up doing nothing of the sort because they couldn't afford to go to any school other than the gooseberry fool local.

Unless of course they had 'chosen' to be wealthier.

Scholarships, bursaries. These things have never been more popular and are growing as more and more parents look to rescue their kids out of the state system and get them into a private school.

easier to remember joke name wrote:[

Cal wrote:I'd argue a child's education is far too important...

No, clearly you don't place enough importance on a child's education, because otherwise you wouldn't come out with stuff like:

Cal wrote:If parents want to and can afford to send their kids to exclusive private schools that's their absolute right

If in your opinion, the 'right' of the wealthy to use their wealth to gain access to a higher standard of service for something like education that should be an absolutely universal right, is more important than everyone having equal and free access to a universal high standard, then clearly your interest is not the child's education, but sticking up for the rights of the rich, maintaining the status quo, etc.

And your interest would be to hold back the life chances of those kids whose parents have the means to pay for better, just to satisfy the 'collective good' or some such socialist nonsense. You therefore believe that standards must come down to create equality for all. This is regressive - and most parents would balk at the idea that the way you give your kids the best chance in life is to lower their educational horizons because the brightest must be held back to allow the slowest to keep up.

The left have been railing against private schools for decades - yet they are never short of an army of their own who all attended these exclusive schools. Hypocrites, as always.

Cal wrote:Well I'm certainly not against private (what we call public) schooling. I believe in the excellence of the public school system in the UK - the results speak for themselves. If parents want to and can afford to send their kids to exclusive private schools that's their absolute right.

Of course public schools are excellent -- they are the best-funded schools in the country. The bourgeois political class, left and right, have no incentive to improve ordinary schools - which the working-class will always have to attend (whether they are operated by the state, the Church, or a charity) - when they know their position and power gives them access to a different, better system.

By the way, I'm not an expert - being, as I am, a state comp urchin - but I think you might've got your definition of 'public' schooling a bit wrong. My understanding is that public schools are those that were incorporated under the Public Schools Act. Private (or 'independent') schools are all other privately-operated schools.

Cal wrote:I'm only against religious schools when they are clearly nothing less than Madrassas in the case of Islamic schools, or creationist propaganda fronts in the case of very few Christian schools (in fact - any in the UK at all..?). I can't speak to Jewish schools as I have no knowledge of them or how they operate.

I've read a few exposes on Orthodox Jewish schools - I think in The Guardian, no less! - and some of them seem pretty mental. As Skarjo pointed out above, Christian schools can get quite nuts too. My conclusion is that religious schooling in general is a can of worms that would be best sealed up: surely you could agree that there is no reason for any child to receive a theological primary/secondary education in a modern, secular society?

Cal wrote:Of course you do. No choice for anyone! Choice bad! And (to quote Melanie Phillips) 'all shall have prizes' amirite?

Facile, particularly the part about all having prizes: why couldn't a standardised curriculum be rigorous?

Cal wrote:I'd argue a child's education is far too important to leave in the hands of an anonymous, indifferent, one-size-fits-all local authority who couldn't care less about individual pupil achievement and operates from a dogmatic, heavily politicised agenda against the interests of the brightest and the best.

Who, then, do you trust to enforce standards of education, if it is not the government? There will always be a niche for excellent education that the private sector could fulfil -- Westminster is currently the go-to for rich, smart parents who want their son to be smart too, and St. Paul's Girls is the equivalent for their daughter. But by what mechanism would the profit-motivated private sector provide similarly excellent education to the children of the poor?

Cal wrote:The loss of the Grammar School system was a politically-motivated tragedy for an entire generations of bright kids.

Perhaps. The 11+ system was not particularly fair, but I do believe in 'streaming' children according to ability. I think the fundamental problem with the grammar school system is probably that middle-class parents have a demonstrable advantage in gaining grammar school places for their children over working-class parents, whereas the continuous assessment within a 'one size fits all' state comp allows for streamed classes that are more robust against the wealthy gaming the system. Given the resources and effort one can train a nice-but-dim to pass one exam, but one can't make him be the top of his class every day all year. Regardless, though, I grant in retrospect that the grammar school system could have potentially been improved rather than scrapped.

Cal wrote:Christ.

Over-the-top, and kind of frustrating, wasn't it? That's how we feel whenever you post in your silly tabloid-speak patois.

Dan already touched on this, but there is also this story today:

As many as 1,000 boys from strictly Orthodox Jewish families may be pupils at a network of between 12 and 20 illegal private schools in east London.

These schools are not registered with the authorities, which makes them illegal, and they offer a narrow, religious syllabus.

The Department for Education is working with Ofsted to find and shut them.

Some of the illegal schools, however, are registered as charities, gaining them an advantaged tax status.

These private schools serve the small so-called Charedi community - a grouping that contains within it a wide variety of strictly Orthodox Jewish traditions. Hackney council estimates there are around 30,000 Charedi Jews in the borough.

Charedi parents are more likely to want a relatively mainstream education for their girls. There is demand, however, from parts of the community for a narrow education for boys, one that is largely focused on religious education and delivered in the Yiddish language.

While there are registered Charedi schools, many are unregistered because they fear being shut or made to follow a broader syllabus.

Officials from schools watchdog Ofsted and the DfE believe many of these schools offer an insufficiently broad education. Former pupils have complained of not being equipped by them to leave the Charedi community.

The education authorities have similar concerns about stricter Christian and Muslim groups. The fundamental issue is that English education has long held that parents should be able to educate their children within their faith. But that conflicts with another principle: children should be equipped to do as they wish as adults.

One ex-student of illegal Charedi schools, now in his 20s and outside the community, told Newsnight: "I'm starting to study for my GCSEs. I'm maybe like an eight-year-old, nine-year-old. That's my level of education."

Men who stayed in the community, however, told Newsnight that they supported the schools - even if they wish the schools were registered with the authorities. Eli Spitzer, now a head teacher at a registered Charedi primary school, says that his education at an unregistered school was "overwhelmingly positive".

The lowest estimate for the number of illegal schools in Hackney heard by Newsnight came from a senior member of the community, who estimated that there were a dozen such institutions, teaching 600 boys.

The highest estimate, from a someone who recently left the community, was that there were around 20. A senior local government official in Hackney estimated there are 1,000 boys in the illegal schools.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35928801

This story from a couple of years ago (although I refuse to believe anybody has the awesome name of "Jonny Scaramanga" ):

The Trojan Horse investigation has focused on an alleged plot to take over some Birmingham schools and run them according to Islamic principles. But while the role of Islam in education has come in for scrutiny, across the UK many students also follow a strict "fundamentalist" Christian curriculum.

For 29-year-old Jonny Scaramanga, who attended Victory Christian School in Bath until he was 14, the experience was "horrendous".

"At 8:15 I would arrive at my 'office' - a desk 2ft wide, with dividers 18 ins tall, designed to remove 'distractions'," he said.

"Every morning we had an opening exercise: reciting pledges of allegiance to Jesus Christ, God and the Bible. Next, we recited that month's scripture passage; we had to memorise around 10-15 Bible-verses each month."

He said the school adopted a "fundamentalist attitude" to religion, adding: "If you believed what they believed, you were Christian. If you believed anything else, you were not Christian."

The school taught Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), a curriculum imported from the USA which is taught in about 50 independent schools across the UK.

While the usual subjects are taught - English, Maths, Science, History and Geography among others - each is approached from a Biblical perspective.

Most controversial are its view that homosexuality is a "learned behaviour" and its teaching of creationism instead of evolution.

"The evolutionist needs some kind of a god with rules to explain what exists today, or he cannot explain it; and yet, he rejects such a god," one science text book states.
"It is more responsible and more reasonable to presuppose that God exists and then pick up the Bible and read 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth' (Genesis 1:1).

"Then you can see purpose in Creation, understand change, accept miracles, and know that His purpose has a goal."

"History was taught as 'His-story' - things happened because they were God's will," Mr Scaramanga said.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27681560

What's very clear is that the problem isn't with one religions schools, the problem is with religious schools in general. I am not sure we will ever be able to get rid of private religious education but we strawberry floating well should.

For Cal to only see the harm in Islamic schools is just another example of his bigoted bias towards Muslims.

Topic is about Islam, cue inevitable deflection to other faiths.

Im being a bit sarcastic there to be fair Moggy, I saw that story about illegal orthodox Jewish schools yesterday and it is pretty worrying I agree. How THAT many children could be off the grid so to speak is shocking.

Cal wrote:Scholarships, bursaries. These things have never been more popular and are growing

I don't believe this to be the case, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.

Cal wrote:your interest would be to hold back the life chances of those kids whose parents have the means to pay for better, just to satisfy the 'collective good' or some such socialist nonsense. You therefore believe that standards must come down to create equality for all. This is regressive

Only if you believe that the average ability of teachers in the UK is substandard. I personally hold our teachers in higher esteem than that. If you believe that the average teacher is gooseberry fool, then I can see why you would think such an approach would lower standards. I personally disagree with this entirely. So it's not "my interest" to hold anyone back at all.

Cal wrote:most parents would balk at the idea that the way you give your kids the best chance in life is to lower their educational horizons because the brightest must be held back to allow the slowest to keep up.

Yes, they probably would. But that's not what I said, is it?

Karl wrote:Actually, Cal, I think you'll find the lefty loony liberals!!!111 are almost unanimously against religious schooling, and indeed against private schooling in general.

I think all schools should be nationalised and taught to a strict, standardised curriculum. A child's education is too important to leave in the hands of religious nutcases (of any creed), private corporations with a profit motive, or ineffective 'community charities' made up of busy-bodies and bored housewives.

Given no-one had even hinted about thinking this was a 'racism thing' before Cal came along, it makes you wonder, doesn't it, that perhaps Cal doth protest too much?

LLL's?

captain red dog wrote:Topic is about Islam, cue inevitable deflection to other faiths.

I get you are being slightly sarcastic but there is no deflection there. A story was posted about the faith schools of one religion being bad, it is an obvious progression from there to take a look at the other faiths. We can all sit around moaning about the terrible Muslims all day long, but it is utterly meaningless to do that without first looking to see if the other religions are also fuckwits. And it turns out that they are.

I agree with Cal that we shouldn't ban private schools btw and I am not against the idea of grammar schools (within reason). Faith schools (of whatever faith) can get strawberry floated though.