The left-leaning Independent news source (it’s no longer a paper newspaper as not enough people bought it) has been giving a platform to a number of left wing academics, teachers and Islamic grievance mongers in order for them to whine about religious education. What they are whining about specifically is that schools are reporting an increase in requests being made by parents for selective withdrawal from Religious Education lessons.

The requests being made by parents appear, according to the Independent, to be wholly concerned with the teaching of Islam. Parents are voting with their feet when it comes to how Islam is being taught in schools and are requesting that their children are withdrawn from all teaching about Islam and in particular from any school visit to a mosque. It’s interesting to note here that the parents are not objecting to the honest teaching about Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or any other peaceful faith, they are instead objecting to the dishonest teaching of the subject of Islam. I really don’t blame or condemn the parents who do this one little bit. I take this view because from what I’ve seen of RE syllabuses and policies, the current teaching of Islam is not the ‘warts and all’ way that I would want the subject of religion to be taught, but a sanitised and bowdlerised version of Islam that also promotes the lie that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’. If I was one of those parents, especially if I had to live with Islamic violence, crime and aggression, as is the case in some areas of Britain that have been ‘enriched’ by Islam, then I would also not want my child taught the lie that Islam is peaceful.

The fact that there has been an increase in requests for selective withdrawal from the Islam parts of the RE curriculum has been noticed. It has been noticed by academics from Liverpool Hope University, by leftist teachers and by the mendacious grievance mongers of the Tell Mama ‘Islamophobia’ monitoring group. None of these groups according to the Independent are happy that parents are exercising this choice, as one might expect.

The answer that many of these groups have come up with is not the obvious one which is to ask why parents so vehemently object to the teaching of Islam and the content of such lessons or why there is a hostility to Islam. Instead the answer that the teachers group came up with was to jump hard on the rights of parents to decide what religious messages the school will give to a child. The teachers group want to ban parents not just from the selective withdrawal of their children from RE lessons on Islam but to completely remove the right of parents to withdraw their children from all RE lessons. This would of course be a monstrous assault on the rights of all parents whether they have a religious belief or not as there would then be no way for parents to express any objection to the moral and spiritual policies of a school. The attitude of the teacher’s leaders and others in this story show that for them the ideology of pushing Islam, and a false version of Islam at that, onto children is far more important than parental rights.

It’s quite obvious from reading the Independent article that the academic Left and other parts of the Leftist Establishment are concerned about the existence of a growing number of people who are protesting the violent ideology of Islam, in the best way they can, by withdrawing their children from pro-Islam RE lessons. What is worrying for me and probably for many other parents as well is the way that the article smears parents who object to biased teaching about Islam by using quotes from teachers to treat Islam refusenik parents as ‘extremists’ such as “The students that have been removed are the ones that need to understand different cultures the most.” This implies that there is something wrong or extreme in disliking an ideology that does a great deal to make itself unlikeable both through its theology and by the behaviour of many of its adherents. The comment also smears the parents as unfit ones because they do not want their children to be told that ‘Islam is a religion of peace’.

I’d like now to look a little more closely at the Independent article and the comments of those who have contributed to it. The Independent’s comments are in italics whereas my words are in plain text.

The Independent said:

Parents should not be allowed to selectively remove their children from religious education (RE) lessons, headteachers say, as study reveals many withdrawal requests are over the teaching of Islam.

I’m not surprised that there are objections to the manner that Islam is taught as a subject. Too much of what I’ve seen of it looks like sanitised Islam promotion rather than the sort of warts and all way that I would like to see the subject taught.

More than two in five school leaders and RE teachers have received requests for students to be withdrawn from teaching about one religion, research from Liverpool Hope University has revealed.

It should be noted that the parents are not objecting to the teaching of genuinely peaceful religions or ones that are entirely or mostly compatible with our own culture, but the one religion that is not peaceful and whose culture is all too often incompatible with ours. What this shows may well be that the parents experience and knowledge of Islam may show up deficiencies in how Islam is taught. If I lived in an area that was dominated or at least heavily influenced by Islam then I’d also worry about a school teaching a hostile ideology as something to be respected or appeased.

Islam is the dominant focus of these parental withdrawal requests, according to the study of 450 school leaders and heads of RE.

This is to be expected, mostly because the uncomfortable truth is that Britain at present suffers from a number of Islam related problems. Problems such as terrorism, crime, anti-social behaviour, aggression and making seemingly excessive demands for their belief system to be accommodated and pandered to, all contribute to a culture in which Islam is disliked. It would be unusual in the least if an ideology that has made itself disliked by the actions of some of its adherents, was not disliked by some parents. For the record we are withdrawing our child completely from RE on the grounds that the agreed syllabus, which pushes the idea that all religions are based on similar moral foundations, is fundamentally wrong. Being the ‘only Jews in the village’ we would have liked him to learn about other peaceful faiths but we could not and would not countenance that he be taught outright lies such as ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ which was part of the curriculum. This is because like many people these days, we’ve seen what Islam really is and we’ve seen that image painted in the blood of the innocent people slain by the slaves of Allah.

One participant, who received requests for children to be withdrawn from mosque visits said: “The students that have been removed are the ones that need to understand different cultures the most.”

Or to put it another way, the teacher sees a family attempting to escape from brainwashing about Islam and they don’t like that a parent is exercising a free choice on this matter. As I said earlier the words used here are being used to smear parents who object to enforced indoctrination about Islam as ‘extremists’. It should be every parent’s right to object to their children being exposed to ideologies that they find hateful or which they dislike. There are many atheist parents who dislike Christianity and they have the right to withdraw their kids from lessons on Christianity so why should not parents withdraw their offspring from lessons about Islam? Parental rights to guide a child’s moral and spiritual education should as far as possible come ahead of the desires of those in the teaching profession to impose their ideology on our children.

The majority (71 per cent) of teachers believe a law allowing parents to withdraw their children from RE is no longer required, according to the study in the British Journal of Religious Education.

This law is still very much required. It is required not just so parents can stop their children being indoctrinated with false information about Islam but also to protect those of no religious belief having their children exposed to moral and religious concepts that such parents may find objectionable. The Independent article gives far too much weight in their to the findings of the British Journal of Religious Education when it comes to the study that they cited that said 71%^ of teachers surveyed want the RE exemption banned.

The British Council of Religious Education sounds grand but is merely a small (one issue per year) peer reviewed publication that although overseen by a Christian group, seems to have succumbed to the various diversity and educational fads and fashions promoted by the Left. It’s notable that the Independent did not give any figures for the number of participants in the study and only gave a percentage. It should also be noted that at least some of their Editorial Board appears to lean towards the liberal-left and could account for the hostile view of parents who wish to selectively withdraw their children from RE. The whole dismissal of the views of parents smacks a lot of ‘we know better’ attitudes coming from these academics.

The Independent then went on to give a platform to the mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya artists of the Tell Mama group. They whined greatly about parents withdrawing their children from pro-Islam propaganda lessons and made the claim that the children who were withdrawn maybe being subjected to radicalisation at home. This is utter bullshit. It is everyone’s right to object to another’s way of life or belief system. Just because a person doesn’t like another or their way of life, doesn’t mean that a person is a ‘radical’, it just means that they have a different opinion. Mind you as we’ve seen in the past, 100% factual accuracy and Tell Mama are not exactly close friends so this is the sort of BS I would expect from them.

The Independent continued:

It comes after a report from Thurrock council revealed that parents in Essex were withdrawing their children from religious education lessons on Islam and stopping them from visiting mosques.

The Thurrock situation is interesting at least for the reason why parents are removing their children from pro-Islam propaganda. I know a little Thurrock and there are many people there who have moved there in order to get a better life and be away from the depredations that Islam has brought to London boroughs such as Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Newham, Barking and Dagenham and Redbridge. These people who are making the requests for selective withdrawal are probably those have seen Islamic culture at its most naked and objectionable. They may even have moved to Thurrock in order to escape the Islamic crime gangs or other problems of Islam inspired violence that seem to be all too common in the aforementioned areas. It is completely understandable that those who have had to flee Islam would object to their children being dragged on mosque visits and be given a version of Islam that is at odds with the experiences that their parents may have had with it.

Iman Atta, director of Tell Mama, an activist group which records and measures anti-Muslim incidents in Britain, told The Independent: “We have been hearing about cases where parents are pulling their children out of mosque visits as part of religious education since they do not want them to be near a mosque.

As I said quite understandable. Islam is disliked not for reasons of mindless bigotry but because the followers of Islam are pissing people off.

“This has been taking place over the last five years and shows that there are parents who have fears or dislike Islam.

Well what with the terror deaths, the mass rapes in our Northern towns and the heavy involvement of Muslims in the Class A drug trade is it any wonder that parents fear or dislike Islam?

This is also concerning, since what kinds of views are their children being exposed to? It does not bode well for the future of people and communities living together”.

This final comment from Ms Atta is little more than a smear against parents who for various reasons, some religious ones and some political or cultural, do not wish to have their children fed a version of Islam that many of us see as untrue and unrealistic. Her statement that the children of parents who are refusing Islam indoctrination are ‘exposing’ children to views that she does not approve of is a blatant attempt to make mosque visit refuseniks appear as if they are violent extremists in the making. This is both wrong and dishonest a thing to say.

Many of those of us who oppose Islam promotion in schools do not care what colour a person’s skin is or any other immutable aspect of their being. However we do care and do worry that propaganda about an ideology that we dislike, often for good and solid reasons, is being fed to our children in the schools that they attend. Ms Atta’s comments about the views of parents who refuse Islam indoctrination are par for the course from a representative of Tell Mama. It’s the sort of comment that should be expected from an organisation that has often engaged, at the public’s expense, (which has since risen to £1.9M) in hyperbole, censoriousness and sometimes downright dishonesty when it comes to reporting on ‘Islamophobia’. As for her comment on communities ‘living together’, such a goal is more easily achieved when one community doesn’t prey on another, or rape another communities children or set off bombs at pop concerts or fill small county towns with Class A drugs. There is a basic rule that should guide those who are minorities living among a majority of those who believe in a different deity. That rule can be summed up as ‘don’t piss off your hosts as it ends badly for all’. Sadly, unlike other minority communities, too much of Britain’s Muslim community seems to have done a pretty good job of pissing off both the majority community and other minorities.

It should be every sane parent’s right to guide their children’s moral and spiritual learning and that right must include the ability to withdraw their children from religious education lessons that conflict with either religion of personal conscience. An attack on the parental right to withdraw their children from religious education either in whole or in part, is an attack on the right of the ordinary British subject to exercise personal conscience. This right for parents to guide their children’s spiritual life, and if necessary keep them away from evangelising religious propaganda of all sorts, must be protected from this cabal of Left wing academics, Islamic grievance mongers and teachers who want to take this right away.