.... I was taught Urdu at home but my younger brother and I were dispatched to a draughty mosque to learn Arabic so we could read the Qur'an as we should. It was terrifying anyway but then we were ordered to stand in a line with our hands outstretched. I watched in horror as the maulvi sahib came round with a cane, thwacking everyone.
I didn't understand why – nobody had done anything wrong. I lasted a week even though my dad had told the mosque leaders not to hit us. A girl who lived on our street told me she had her bum pinched by a young imam.
Another imam beat a boy so badly his leg was broken. I spent another few weeks in a damp cellar with other girls rocking back and forth, while upstairs the boys also learned parrot fashion, then another mosque in a house and finally at the home of a kindly Pakistani woman.
.... I thought by now we'd have modern mosques where the third generation of British Muslims would learn about compassion and how to be fine, upstanding citizens, incorporating the best of British and Islamic values.
But five decades on, the choice is between a mosque where the imam doesn't speak English and hits the children or one where they speak English but insist seven-year-old girls cover their faces. And frankly, that's no choice at all. [Guardian Cif] Read more
