Does the Western media present an accurate picture of the state of Muslim schools in Britain?

Dispatches on Channel 4: Muslim Schooling

The documentary annoys me. The comments written have annoyed me more, you’ve watched an 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 Islamic-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.
Iftikhar Ahmad
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk