UK: Students punished for not taking part in Muslim prayer

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during a religious education lesson.


Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.


They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent - which included wearing Muslim headgear - was a breach of their human rights.


Alsager School, near Stoke, has received furious complaints from parents after two Year 7 boys were punished for refusing to kneel to Allah during a religious studies class


One parent, Sharon Luinen, said: "This isn't right, it's taking things too far. I understand that they have to learn about other religions. I can live with that but it is taking it a step too far to be punished because they wouldn't join in Muslim prayer. Making them pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that they were told they were being disrespectful. I don't want this to look as if I have a problem with the school because I am generally very happy with it."


Another parent Karen Williams said: "I am absolutely furious my daughter was made to take part in it and I don't find it acceptable. I haven't got a problem with them teaching my child other religions and a small amount of information doesn't do any harm. But not only did they have to pray, the teacher had gone into the class and made them watch a short film and then said 'we are now going out to pray to Allah'. Then two boys got detention and all the other children missed their refreshment break because of the teacher. Not only was it forced upon them, my daughter was told off for not doing it right. They'd never done it before and they were supposed to do it in another language."


"My child has been forced to pray to Allah in a school lesson." The grandfather of one of the pupils in the class said: "It's absolutely disgusting, there's no other way of putting it.


"My daughter and a lot of other mothers are furious about their children being made to kneel on the floor and pray to Islam. If they didn't do it they were given detention. I am not racist, I've been friendly with an Indian for 30 years. I've also been to a Muslim wedding where it was explained to me that alcohol would not be served and I respected that. But if Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion there would be war."


Parents said that their children were made to bend down on their knees on prayer mats which the RE teacher had got out of her cupboard and they were also told to wear Islamic headgear during the lesson on Tuesday afternoon.


Deputy headmaster Keith Plant said: "It's difficult to know at the moment whether this was part of the curriculum or not. I am not an RE teacher, I am an English teacher. At the moment it is our enterprise week and many of our members of staff are away. The particular member of staff you need to speak to isn't around. I think that it is a shame that so many parents have got in touch with the Press before coming to me. I have spoken to the teacher and she has articulately given me her version of events, but that is all I can give you at the moment."


A statement from Cheshire County Council on behalf of the school read: "The headteacher David Black contacted this authority immediately complaints were received. Enquiries are being made into the circumstances as a matter of urgency and all parents will be informed accordingly. Educating children in the beliefs of different faith is part of the diversity curriculum on the basis that knowledge is essential to understanding. We accept that such teaching is to be conducted with some sense of sensitivity."


Source: Daily Mail (English)

17 comments:

Reliapundit said...

unbefrickinlieveable.

how long before big ben is replaced with a muezzin?

Anonymous said...

Freaking unreal. That IS a human rights violation. It's also incredibly dangerous to engage in prayers for a "religion" which beheads apostates. I attended a private Jesuit Catholic school, and nobody was ever made to pray or to do so in a certain way. That would have been unacceptable. The Jesuit priests and nuns were respectful of the fact that this is a secular society, and that even in a Catholic school some students were Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, Humanist, or just Catholics who prayed in their own way on their own time. These were 11-year-olds at a public nonreligious school. Outrageous.

Robohobo said...

Hey, move along, there is nothing to see here. These are not the Muslims you were looking for.

Did the "teacher" make them say the shahada?

Just teaching them the ways of their future masters.

Esther said...

Please keep in mind that both teachers and students were non-Muslim.

Anonymous said...

I sincerely hope that these appeaser teachers are burnt extra-crispy in Hell. They deserve to be dhimmis. I just read in 'America Alone at the End of the World' by Mark Steyn that the the prisoners at Guantanamo are each given their own Koran. Not only that, but the soldiers who man the prison handle them with gloves so as to validate the terrorists' beliefs that they are najis. Because Al Qadea terrorists are so hygienic, physically, ethically, morally, etc. Do you think Churchill of FDR would have given Nazi POWs their own copies of Mein Kampf? Unreal.

Iftikhar Ahmad said...

Salaam

It is not Islam and Muslims who are creating problems, actually it is British society creating problems for the
Muslim community.

The Muslim community has been vicitm of Paki-bashing in all walks of life by the British society and Establishment for the last 60 years. Now it is vicitm of terrorism by the British Establishment. Thousands of Muslim youth are being serched in the streets and hundreds of them are behind the bar without any trial.

State schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers are not suitable for |Muslim children. This is the reason why majority of them leave schools with low grades.

Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models. Muslim schools are not only faith schools but they are more or less
bilingual schools.

Bilingual Muslim children need to learn standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. They need to be well versed in Arabic to recite and understand the Holy Quran. They need to be well versed in Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.

Bilingualism is an asset but the British schooling regards it as a problem. A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit. Pakistan is only seven hours from London and majority of British Muslims are from Pakistan.

More than third of British Muslim have no qualifications. British school system has been failing large number of Muslims children for the last 60 years. Muslim scholars see the pursuit of knowledge as a duty, with the Quran containing several verses to the rewards of learning. 33% of British Muslims of working age have no qualifications and Muslims are also the least likely to have degrees or equivalent qualifications. Most of estimated 500,000 Muslim school-aged pupils in England and Wales are educated in the
state system with non-Muslim monolingual teachers. Majority of them are underachievers because they are at a wrong place at a wrong time.

Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school. As far as higher education
is concerned, Muslim students can be educated with others. Let Muslim community educate its own children so that they can develop their own Islamic, cultural and linguistic identities and become usefull members of
the British society rather than becoming a buden.

We are living in an English speaking country and English is an
international language, therefore, we want our children to learn and be well versed in standard English and at the same time well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages. Is there anything wrong with this approach?

It is not only the Muslim community who would like to send their children to Muslim school. Sikh and Hindu communities have started setting up their schools. Last week. British Black Community has planned the first all black school with Black teachers in Birmingham.

Scotland's first state funded Muslim school could get the go-ahead within months after First Munister Alex Salmond declared he was sympathetic towards the needs and demands of the Muslim community.

Iftikhar Ahmad
London School of Islamics Trust
www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

Unknown said...

Is there a verse in the Qur'an which says something along the lines of 'Oh Muslims! Never take any responsiblity for anything you do, ever, or you will burn in hell!'? Maybe tucked away in between the numerous verses on how to murder infidels or beat up women or whathaveyou?

'Oh, you've arrested me for planning to blow up some civilians! It's all your fault!'

'Oh, I've got no qualifications because I'm dumber than a box of rocks because I belong to a deathcult which mandates that its central book is the pinnacle of all knowledge and should be rote-learned at the expense of everything else! It's all someone else's fault!'

'Oh, I've just raped and beaten a girl! It's all her fault!'

No wonder the vast majority of Britons have a visceral dislike of Islam. It's just a normal human reaction. In much the same way you'd dislike a monkey who you'd - out of the goodness of your heart - taken into your home and fed and kept and all it could do was bite you and shit everywhere.

If you feel the British state is failing you, go the fuck back to your failed, Third World Islamic hellhole and quit your whinging, you inbred cretin turds.

BigWayne said...

This is why the USA tries to separate church and state, just to keep this from happening. I agree with Andrew. If they don't like it, then let them move to one of the dustbowl countries where their beliefs are allowed. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

What that teacher did was unexcuseable. He should not have forced them to pray like that. I would say the same thing if that teacher had told them to pray to any god, muslim, christian, hindu, etc. Tell them about the religion and move on. If a visual aid was needed, the teacher should have made posters or asked a muslim friend to come to class that day and demonstrate how muslim's pray.

Muslims need to understand that their violent religion is rather disliked among most of the free world because of it's teachings of killing innocent others to get their point across. I know of no other religion that currently asks that of their followers(in B4 references to Old Testament). Some say it's the radicals messing it up for the rest of the Islamic community. That's only half of it. It's the fact that the rest of the community doesn't do more to put the radicals in their place. I was in a convenience store in Dearborn Mich run by an arabic looking man when his TV told it was Osama Bin Laden who blew up the towers and why. The man cheered! I threw my stuff on the counter, called him a traitor, and left.

I can kind of see why 90% of Islam is so devoted to their religion. The religious leaders in charge in the homeland and Asia drive Islam down the people's throats from the day they are born, and being rather undeveloped they do not have good access to a more liberal media for any outside information, and that's the way their leaders like it. The leaders *want* to be the sole source of information for the public there. No wonder the Muslims over there hate everyone and act the way they do. They're fed only the information the leaders want them to hear, and being inaccessible to a more democratic way of thinking gives the leaders over there total control that they are not willing to relinquish.

Mr Ahmad, England should not be made to cater to *ANY* religious sect. If you don't like what the public school system has to offer, send your kids to a private school thats based on your religion, just like the christians and other theist families in England have to do if they don't like the public schools. Sorry for the rant, but it had to be said.

Esther said...

To all commentators,

Please note that Iftikhar Ahmad is not a Muslim representative and runs a radical school, as far as I can figure it out.

I have allowed his comment for the moment, but will ban any future repeats.

Adam O'Connell said...

Islam is not supposed to force people to comply... so this is totally wrong.

Anonymous said...

Adam O'Connell, you seem to be missing the point of Islam entirely. That "no compulsion in religion" thing is an abrogated verse which never applied to non-Muslims anyway, but rather to Muslims being forced to pray. Islam is a totalitarian/colonialist political doctrine/cult which either forces infidels to join the Islamic party (or "convert" as they say, as if Islam were a religion) or live as dhimmis. Bless your heart for assuming that Islam bore any similarities to legitimate religions. Lots of Westerners do that, and they also assume that Islam offers at least one single moral teaching or has some semblance of a divine basis, but you all are simply wrong. It's human to assume that others are decent, moral, ethical human beings, but sadly, that is not the case when it comes to 1/5 of the world's population (although I realize that many of these people are not Muslims in their hearts and go with the flow out of fear of being beheaded for apostacy). I forgive you because I checked your profile and you're cute. Here's What Religion of Peace and a Big Stack of Dead Bodies (http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Games-Muslims-Play.htm#2-256) has to say about that verse:

Muhammad preached “No compulsion in religion.”
(Qur’an, Verse 2:256)

The Muslim Game:

Muslims quote verse 2:256 from the Qur’an to prove what a tolerant religion Islam is. The verse reads in part, “Let there be no compulsion in religion; truth stands out clearly from error…”

The Truth:

The Muslim who offers this verse may or may not understand that it is from one of the earliest Suras (or chapters) from the Medinan period. It was “revealed” at a time when the Muslims had just arrived in Medina after being chased out of Mecca. They needed to stay in the good graces of the stronger tribes around them, many of which were Jewish. It was around this time, for example, that Muhammad decided to have his followers change the direction of their prayer from Mecca to Jerusalem.

But Muslims today pray toward Mecca. The reason for this is that Muhammad issued a later command that abrogated (or nullified) the first. In fact, abrogation is a very important principle to keep in mind when interpreting the Qur’an – and verse 2:256 in particular – because later verses (in chronological terms) are said to abrogate any earlier ones that may be in contradiction.

Muhammad’s message was far closer to peace and tolerance during his early years at Mecca, when he didn’t have an army. This changed dramatically after he attained the power to conquer, which he eventually used with impunity to bring other tribes into the Muslim fold. Contrast verse 2:256 with Suras 9 and 5, which were the last “revealed,” and it is easy to see why Islam has been anything but a religion of peace from the time of Muhammad to the present day.

There is some evidence that verse 2:256 may not have been intended for Muslims at all, but is instead meant to be a message to other religions concerning their treatment of Muslims. Verse 193 of the same Sura instructs Muslims to "fight with them (non-Muslims) until there is no more persecution and religion is only for Allah." This reinforces the narcissistic nature of Islam, which places Muslims above non-Muslims, and applies very different standards to both groups.

Though many Muslims today reject the practice of outright forcing others into changing their religion [and just try to blow them up and rape their women instead], forced conversion has been a part of Islamic history since Muhammad first picked up a sword. As he is recorded in many places as saying, "I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah..."

Muhammad put his words into practice. When he marched into Mecca with an army, one of his very first tasks was to destroy idols at the Kaaba, which had been devoutly worshipped by the Arabs for centuries. By destroying these objects of worship, he destroyed the religion of the people and supplanted it with his own.

Interestingly, even the Muslims who quote 2:256 usually believe in Islamic teachings that sound very much like religious compulsion. These would be the laws punishing apostasy by death, and the institutionalized discrimination against religious minorities under Islamic rule that is sometimes referred to as “dhimmiitude.”

Dhimmitude prohibits non-Muslims from sharing their faith and even includes the extortion of money from them in the form of a tax called the jizya. Those who refuse to pay this arbitrary amount are put to death. If this isn’t compulsion, then what is?

Get it? This is why pandering to Islamists is incredibly dangerous and ridiculously degrading.

Anonymous said...

Yeah Esther, please ban this terrorists' propaganda. First of all, there is nothing wrong with searching 15-39-year-old terrorists. ALL Muslims are terrorists, or they would not be required to pay the zakat, which always goes to either terrorism or to spreading terrorist propaganda, or there would be one legitimate Islamic charity in this world, or Muslims would actually believe in charity itself, instead of believing that whatever fate befalls people is their own fault for not being good enough Muslims. And then they collect social services out the ass as their jizya, not that all Muslims are also mentally ill malignant narcissists by definition. That's just the general concensus of the psychiatric community at large. ANd the Koran places zero emphasis on learning anything except Islam, which only constitutes miseducation. Believing the sick garbage that the Koran teaches would unequivocally preclude admission into any private kindergarten in the free world (i.e., that the Earth is flat, that the stars are arrows to be shot at Satan, that meteor showers are also arrows being shot at Satan/jinns, that the sun revolves around the Earth and sets in a muddy puddle, that the sky is solid, that menstruation is a disease, that the moon is a lamp, that sperm are produced all throughout the human body (both male and female) and stored in the kidneys, that 340 + 0 = 360, that camel urine and fly wings have lots of proven medicinal benefits, and, of course, that women are genetically inferior, mentally retarded, inherently immoral, filthy creatures, literally dirtier than dirt, who are actually cattle but who are still beneath camels on the food chain, who must not be allowed to exist except as the outright property (slave) of some man, and who are designed for nothing but sex, breeding, cooking, and being traded as sex slaves by their fathers, brothers, and husbands). Publicly funding schools which espouse an incredibly poorly-constructed Mein Kampf of a document (which is equally based on sick hang-ups - about pedophilia, incest, slavery, every form of sex crime, gender apartheid, extreme and unprecedented oppression of women, torture, parasitism as a career, the art of lying, and a deep contempt for honest hard work - as it is on racist hatred, supremacy, and genocide) containing absolutely nothing but lies, errors, distortions, and logical fallacies constitutes miseducation, child abuse, and sedition, retard, and it has no place in a civilized society.


Islam/the Koran never placed any emphasis on individual responsibility, education, or honest hard work. What it has emphasized is an extreme hatred for all those things and that Muslims are to survive as they always have, through parasitizing reasonable, decent, moral people and pimping away their daughters. And kids need to learn English in school along with a useful foreign language, which would exclude Urdu, since it is not a language of literature, commerce, business, education, technology, or anything remotely civilized or relevant n the modern world. Wonder why. Learn it at home, if your parents aren't too busy breeding like rats to talk to you. Even the 'naji' Indians realize this and place an emphasis on ENglish education. That, combined with the fact that they place an emphasis on hard work and legitimate education, are precisely why Indians are actually more than capable of competing in the global market and assimilatng into American/European/Australian/Canadian society, even uplifting them, rather than ghettoizing them like Pakis. Pakistan has managed to even exterminate its own culture, for God's sake. That's why you don't fit in in British culture. Because you refuse to civilize, assimilate, adopt the Juseo-Christian work ethic, AND TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN FATES AND SHORTCOMINGS LIKE RESPONSIBLE, REASONABLE, DECENT ADULTS. Oh, and PLEASE call me a racist, even though the only difference between Indians and Pakistanis is that Pakistanis beling to a Dark-Age totalitarian Nazi death-cult/political movement. It's not racial, it's not linguistic, it's ISLAMIC.

Anonymous said...

whoaaa my european friends!..'think we're taking this a little too far here, both in the comments and what actually happened

so like...i agree totally that no one should be forced to worship something at all anywhere, esp children at school...dunno why these teachs did this but..

>>side note; if these children are jewish or christian...then contrary to what the first parent said, they do worship Allah (if they believe in God)...because God=Allah 100% of the time, same entity here, just 2 different linguas.

Anonymous said...

just trying to clear things up...

Esther said...

Hi genieyclo,

Testifying that Allah is the only God and Muhammad is his messenger, as is done in Muslim prayer is:
1. the way to convert to Islam.
2. not something Christians or Jews can do if they see themselves as Christians or Jews.

Esther said...

Hi jetabler,

Not all Muslims are terrorists and not all Zakat goes to terrorism.

Daphne said...

Allah and God are not the same even though muslims claim they are. Muhammad made the claim to get as many converts to his 'new' religion. Just like the mormons.

The Islamic god believes in flogging/stoning adulterous women, cutting off hands of thieves and an eye for an eye.
The Christian god believes in forgiveness for sins, giving the thief your coat and turning the other cheek.
The two are opposites. If one of them is god then the other is Satan. Give you one guess which is which.