Religious Education

There has been a low profile media debate these last few days about a scheduled visit to Exeter Mosque as part of a compulsory religious education programme for children at a Lostwithiel primary school. Ten sets of parents objected, (or ten percent of parents according to whichever report is correct) stating that their children will not be attending.

The headmistress then allegedly singled out the children at school and questioned them. 

The issues are: 

1. Lostwithiel, in east Cornwall, is 68 miles from the cathedral city of Exeter. Exeter University has a Saudi-funded Arab and Islamic studies department and a politically partisan history faculty. Several notoriously anti-Israel advocates are on the university payroll.  There is a considerable Muslim community in Exeter, including a diverse student population studying Arabic and other subjects.  There was one attempted terrorist attack there in 2008.

2. At present there are very few Muslims in Cornwall. It’s diverse, Jim, but not as you know it. 

3. The parents cited ‘safety concerns’ as the reason for their objection to the mosque visit, but it has been suggested that openly repeating the real reasons might expose them to the risk of committing aggravated Islamophobia. 

I see the BBC website has solicited a quote from the M.C.B.

Why it is necessary to drag children 68 miles in order to prematurely introduce them to an alien religion that, with luck, they might never need to rub noses with? 

Why does the headmistress deem it necessary to compulsorily indoctrinate primary school children with propaganda and perhaps proselyting, supposedly to persuade them of the peaceful, unISIS-like nature of Islam, when everyone, including many Muslims, know it’s not quite so simple. It’s a funny old world, and these are strange times. 

The proposed criminalisation of Islamophobia is something that is impossible to get ones head round.

What is Islamophobia? How do you commit it? There are already laws covering violence, so a special law would presumably have to be directed towards ‘words‘ and / or refusing to serve burkas in your cafe or admit bushy beards to your Christian or secular B & B. But since there are people proudly and openly advocating BDS, which is a similarly prejudice-based practice, I don’t see how one could be enforced without criminalising the other. No doubt someone would find a way.

I don’t think Ed really means it, or maybe he hasn’t thought it through. This election is full of promises and proposals that haven’t been thought through, so it must just be one of those.

Talking of YouTube videos, as Craig said, most of the BBC Bias-themed ones clunk. 

Away from the election for a minute, there is a series of videos that some of us are fond of because of their straightforward no holds-barred pro-Israel or anti-Islam content. 

I have posted one or two of them on this site, but I wouldn’t want to go overboard and frighten the horses. However, over on EoZ there is one particularly forthright Pat Condell, which is reinforced by a particularly apposite Memri video of two Egyptian ‘Clerics’ discussing their hatred of Jews, and the Israel Palestine conflict which they define as ‘religion-based’ rather than territorial or political. Tell it like it is boys. (But not in front of the children)

The set was a lurid green, and there was a darkly menacing background. I was particularly intrigued by the get-up of the one dressed in a slanket with a tablecloth draped over his head - think nativity play. His compatriot’s trainers were strangely incongruous as accessories to the full-length maxi dress, shawl and the rest of the ensemble.