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August 30, 2006

UK: Arguments Over Muslim "Faith-Schools"

Last week, Britain's Communities Secretary, Ruth Kelly, made a speech at the inauguration of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion on Wednesday, August 23, in which she gave fulsome praise to the multi-ethnic society of Britain. There was little in this speech to outrage PC proponents. She said: "...I believe that we should celebrate and clearly articulate the benefits that migration and diversity have brought - but while celebrating that diversity we should also recognise that the landscape is changing, changing rapidly. And we should not shy away from asking - and trying to respond to - some of the more difficult questions that arise.

I believe it is time now to engage in a new and honest debate about integration and cohesion in the UK. If we are to have an effective, progressive response to these issues, then we must be honest about the challenges we face and be prepared to meet these head on with renewed energy and impetus."

Nothing too controversial there, then. However, despite her praise in this speech for the "work in Bradford aimed at developing a citizenship curriculum for Madrassas", at the weekend, she made a fierce attack on some Muslim faith schools while talking to the BBC on its News 24 strand. Here, she argued that Muslim "faith-schools" which propagated "isolationism and extremism should be closed.

She still peppered her comments with PC-friendly comments, such as: "When I see a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf or a hijab, I don't feel threatened, I celebrate it."

Her comments about Islamic schools which promoted segregation have provoked criticisms, which will be described later. But to understand the irony and hypocrisy of her contradictory comments, one must first remember that Ruth Kelly, herself a devout Catholic, was previously the Education Minister. While holding this post, she had helped to promote these same faith schools, which she now claims include some which foster segregation.

Tony Blair has always encouraged such faith-schools, even though these have been deeply unpopular with the general public. In November 2001, a poll by You Gov found that 80% of the British public were against increases in religious schools. The poll involved 5,979 individuals, and had been taken in the first part of the month. This was a month after the horrors of 9/11.

The Education secretary at that time was Estelle Morris, herself a former teacher, and Tony Blair was said to be 'personally committed' to encouraging more religious groups to set up their own schools, with a lessening of the capital required to start such ventures. Estelle Morris' support for such groups was widely criticised by varying groups, including Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society. Morris was suggesting faith-schools should be more inclusive and allow students from other faiths to enroll.

The then-education spokesman for the Tory party, Damien Green, had criticised Morris for suggesting that such schools should include other faith-oriented pupils, saying: "Parents will value faith schools as they are at the moment. The government needs to decide whether they actually support faith-based schools."

Last year, when Ruth Kelly was the Education Minister, another poll was taken by ICM for the Guardian, and it showed that the public were still overwhelmingly against faith schools. The poll found that 64% of those questioned thought "the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind".

And since then the arguments have continued. On April 11 this year, teachers from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers voted in favour of a call to the government to ban the funding of faith schools from the public purse. But a week later, on April 18 the National Union of Teachers voted against any ban to end faith-based state education, despite a motion which said that these schools led to ethnic conflict, extremism and "even terrorism".

So Ruth Kelly's comments come on top of an already contentious debate. The majority of the public reject the idea of their tax money being used to fund schools which suggest Mohammed the "prophet" was the living ambassador of God, and teachers themselves are polarised over the issue of such schools.

The full text of Ruth Kelly's speech to the Commission on Integration and Cohesion can be found here. It is hardly world-shattering in its mundane acceptance of the diversity of UK culture and society, aimed at an audience which already promotes such an interpretation of society.

But her comments to the BBC are more sharp, even though they whitewash aspects of the current situation. "Most Muslims would call those terrorists who would undermine the fabric of this society as not true Muslims but revolutionaries who are cowering under the cloak of Islam," she said. She advised that countering such extremism would require having communications with "these law-abiding Muslims people in this country who try to combat that."

We reported on August 14 how her previous attempts to talk to Muslim "representatives" about the Islamist extremism led to one individual, Dr Syed Aziz Pasha OBE, having the audacity to suggest that if Muslims in Britain had sharia law, then that would combat extremism.

She said to the BBC that the government would never countenance sharia law in Britain: "We are not going down that route. We don't think that's compatible with Britain being a tolerant, diverse society that welcomes people of different faiths."

But she was firm about Islamic faith schools that promoted isolationism, saying that the government had to "stamp out" such establishments. She said: "They should be shut down. Different institutions are open to abuse and where we find abuse we have got to stamp it out and prevent that happening."

On Muslims who celebrated terror at home and abroad, she said: ""The bottom line is, if they are glorifying terrorism, if they are criminals, if they are breaking the law in this country then they should be arrested and dealt with appropriately. We've got to say that clearly and not be afraid to say it, and work with the community and the Muslim community as well."

Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, caused controversy last year, when he suggested that immigrants from the Indian sub-continent were choosing to live in segregated ghettoes in Britain's cities. However, the Times reports that yesterday, Phillps argued in favour of Muslim faith-based schools. He was addressing the Royal Geographic Society, and made a veiled hint at Ruth Kelly's comments. He spoke of the commonly-held view that faith-schools, and Muslim faith-schools especially, were incompatible with integration.

Phillips said: "What the proponents of this view really want to say is one of two things. One, a perfectly valid view, is that religion should be banned from the public sphere and practised only in private if at all. The other, not at all valid in my view, is that Muslims can't be trusted to run schools, like Christians have done for centuries."

But perhaps the most angry critic of Ruth Kelly's comments came from with in her own constituency. Kelly is MP for Bolton West, and a Muslim woman from Bolton, Komal Adris, has condemned her comments about Islamic schools which promote "isolationism and extremism". Ms Adris is from the northern branch of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee

The Bolton Evening News reports that Ms Adris has said that Kelly had made faith-schools a "scapegoat".

She said: "We've had a faith school in Bolton for a long time, and I don't think we've had a problem. I think faith schools are just becoming a new scapegoat, because outside the school there's a whole community which pupils are engaging in. The government risks creating isolation themselves by singling out Muslim faith schools."

A councillor for Bolton, Rosa Kay, said: "I think faith schools have come a long way. Many make places available for pupils of other faiths, so there is a level of integration. I think understanding begins in schools, and I certainly wouldn't want to eliminate any faith schools."

"I just think it is important to encourage children to understand each other's religions. In Bolton we have the Interfaith Council, which works with schools to promote that understanding."

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 30, 2006 5:35 PM

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Posted by: Prodicus at August 30, 2006 6:42 PM

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