Islamic “education”

I am beginning to suspect that there is a "stupid gene" that correlates with religiosity, seriously, someone needs to do that research. My idiocy antenna was drawn to this little story in London today about a chap called Iftickhar Ahmad of the London School of Islamics who accused the British educational system of "cultural fascism", I know what you are thinking, surely this must be a joke, unfortunately it seems not.

Mr Ahmad sent out an email entitled "Muslim Children and Sex education" in response to claims that certain "religious" parents had removed their children from a school in London because they disapproved of certain "themes" being taught; let's take a look at what he thinks.

Simply to secure a decent moral upbringing for their children … Rather than filling the heads of impressionable boys and girls with fatuous drivel about gay penguins, schools should be ashamed of the fact that they are sending children out into the world barely able to read, write and add up properly. Muslim children are leaving schools without learning their cultural roots and linguistic skills.

Ok, first mistake, there is no such thing as a "Muslim child", only a child of Muslim parents, not a great start, anyway moving on.

Are UK parents really faced with a choice between literacy and gay penguins?

Let's look at the facts, the literacy rate in the UK is >99%, i.e. at least 99 out of 100 children leave school knowing how to read and write, not too shabby. For comparison the literacy rate of Pakistan an Islamic country (and presumably a "moral" one in Mr Ahmad's eyes?) is only 49%, Somalia, another Islamic country only 37%, Afghanistan 28%, not so good, perhaps Islam is what is truly opposite literacy?

As for gay penguins, I would dearly love to see the text book on that, but as for homosexuality in nature well that is just something biologists like to call REALITY, a technical term that Mr Ahmad is clearly unfamiliar with.

He goes on to say,

This latest episode should be a wakeup call for Muslim parents. Muslim parents MUST explain our moral standards to schools and be prepared to take steps to protect our children's morals and values from a growing agenda to impose liberal values upon them. This is an eye-opening for those Muslim parents who keep on sending their children to state schools to be mis-educated and de-educated by non-Muslim monolingual teachers.

What moral standard is Mr Ahmad referring to here? perhaps he is referring to ones in Muslim theocracies that allow women to be treated as property, homosexuals to be hung, dishonoured girls to be stoned to death, people to be killed for leaving Islam, death threats to be imposed on foreign authors for writing books, burning people to death for publishing cartoons etc. It can't be those because they are all against the law in this country, can anyone see the obvious problem here?

Mr Ahmad clearly fell asleep one day and woke up in the wrong society, the wrong country and in the wrong century, how inconvenient.

So what is Mr Ahmad's solution to his woes? Oh yes that bastion of the religious intolerant; educational apartheid. He says,

State schools where Muslim children are in majority must be designated as Muslim community schools employing bilingual Muslim teachers to act as role models for pupils during their developmental periods.

Unfortunately our own Conservative party appears to support Mr Ahmad, always keen to blur the distinctions between their brains and their backsides the shadow schools secretary and conservative MP Michael Grove recently said to the Yorkshire post that his party would welcome the creation of new religious schools and accepted that the policy could lead to an increase in Islamic state schools being funded in areas of West Yorkshire. Apparently he also said that this blatant support for the segregation of children "wouldn't lead to further segregation", WTF?

I wonder if he's thinking about adopting the Somali or the Pakistani model?