Huff Post: It was a typical Saturday afternoon and I had decided to take my three-year-old daughter with me to the mosque to pray dhuhr (the afternoon prayer). While we were there, my head in prostration, my daughter running around in the vast open space, I began to wonder what her relationship with the mosque will be when she becomes older. As I sat and reflected, I saw the curtain that separated the women’s section from the men’s. I thought to myself that it wouldn’t be long before my daughter would be separated from me and praying behind a curtain that would prevent her from gaining direct access to speakers and/or people of knowledge. Unfortunately, the issues didn’t end there.
Oftentimes I would find myself leaving the mosque annoyed at the cliques and exclusivity that prevented anyone from a different background to feel a strong bond with its community members. I started wondering if others felt the same way. As a second generation American, I did not want to affiliate with a specific ethnic based mosque. Nor did I believe that it was in the spirit of Islam for mosques to have this type of segregation.
My wife and I started having conversations with friends and family who shared common grievances they had with their local mosques. It soon became apparent to us that many of our peers felt the same way but didn’t have an avenue in which they felt empowered to voice their concerns. Some friends mentioned the fact that they didn’t necessarily have any bad experiences at their mosques but it just didn’t feel like a relevant part of their daily lives, and others had found their spiritual edification through community activism outside the walls of the mosque. We felt the need to document these experiences and UnMosqued was born.
Categories: Americas
A civilisation is measured not by the rights it grants its majority but the privileges it allows its minorities. Muslim families are as entitled as any other religious group to schools that nurture their children’s faith. Muslim pupils should be educated in Muslim schools because the current system is marginalising them. Teaching Muslim children in a Muslim school would remove the “problem of them being exposed” to values that conflict with Islamic faith. Muslim pupils are disadvantaged and marginalised in the city’s state schools because the cultural heritage of the curriculum is “European and Christian”.
Muslim schools provide an education in accordance with the Muslim beliefs and values, such as providing single-sex schooling after puberty. They are thus a response to the danger of absorption into the dominant culture.
The demand for state funded Muslim schools is in accordance with the law of the land. Muslims are not asking for any favour. I set up the first Muslim school in London in 1981 and now there are 188 Muslim schools and only 12 are state funded. I would like to see each and every Muslim child in a state funded Muslim schools and I hope one day my dream would come true. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school. Bilingual Muslim children need bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental period. There are few schools for Hindu and Sikh communities. Now even Black community is thinking of setting up their own state funded schools for their own children with black teachers.
You better teach your children in your own schools and let migrant communities teach their children according to their needs and demands. British Establishment and society should concentrate on the evils of their own society and stop trying to change the way of life of Muslims. Muslim community does not want to integrate with the British society, indulging in incivility, anti-social behaviour, drug and knife culture, binge drinking, teenage pregnancies and abortion.
A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit. He/she is well versed in standard English, Arabic, Urdu and other community languages so that they do not find themselves cut off from their cultural heritage and are able to enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.
The Muslim community has been passing through a phase of fourth Crusades. The battleground is the field of education, where the young generation will be educated properly with the Holly Quran in one hand and Sciences in other hand to serve humanity. A true Muslim is a citizen of the world, which has become a small global village. We are going to prepare our youth to achieve that objective in the long run. A true Muslim believes in Prophet Moses and the Prophet Jesus and without them one cannot be a Muslim. My suggestion is that in all state, independent and Christian based school special attention should be given to the teaching of Comparative Religion and Islam should be taught by qualified Muslim Teachers to make the children aware the closeness of Islam to Christianity and Judaism which will help them to think about Islam, as “A Pragmatic and Modern Way of Life,” during their life time. Those state schools where Muslim children are in majority may be opted out as Muslim Academies.
There are hundreds of state and church schools in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Harrow and other big cities where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be opted out as Muslim Academies so that non-Muslim children could enjoy their own meals in their own schools. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
IA
London School of Islamics Trust
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk