theguardian: by Jon Boone.
Religious websites and instructors enjoy mini-boom reading Qu’ran online as British Muslims tap into distance teaching.
With his track record as a member of the political arm of a banned terrorist organisation, Mian Shahzib is unlikely to ever be given a visa to enter Britain.
But that does not stop the jovial 33-year-old from giving British children religious instruction every day from the comfort of his home in Pakistan.
He spends hours each night sitting under a fluorescent light in the courtyard of a small mosque in Lahore, peering into a laptop as children first from the Middle East, then Europe and North America spend half an hour after school talking to him over a faltering Skype line. “Put on your cap and wash your hands,” he told a 12-year-old boy sitting in a large office chair in his parents’ home in Edinburgh.
After checking the boy had memorised various prayers to get him through the day, including a special blessing for exiting and entering the toilet, he got down to business, helping the boy read aloud the classical Arabic of a few verses of the Qur’an.
The fact that a hardcore Islamist and long-term follower of the UN-proscribed Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) has daily access to children in the west is likely to fuel concerns about religious radicals spreading their message.
