Women and equality rights campaigners nervously await the High Court judgement in the gender segregation case: Ofsted v the Al-Hijrah School in Birmingham. Firmly opening up Parveen’s (Pandora’s) faith and education box again, I predict these types of cases will increase. Educational environments, primary right through to university campuses, are a key battleground for Islamist propaganda.
Conversations revert back and forth, in the hope of the faith and faithless finding common ground. The most obvious manifestation of dysfunctionality — complete gender segregation — masked multiple levels of educational and social failings, resulting in the school being taken over by Ofsted, vis-à-vis an academy chain; the equivalent of product recall in the education sector.
I wrote and coordinated a letter, co-signed by brilliant women of Muslim heritage, marking our objections to an increasing malignant influence of religious doctrine in education.
Young minds are fertile soil and architects of terror want to turn cerebral green belt into polluted brown fields. We received the inevitable backlash. The usual platitudes of, “It is an attack on Muslims” to, “You are making things up” and even, “You are vilifying us (Muslims) all”. [Sedaa.org] Read more
