Sitting in the classroom, Michelle watched as the teacher unwrapped the small bundle sitting on top of the V-shaped stand which, until only a few moments ago was sitting high on a shelf, above all the other books, alone and seemingly forgotten.
The teacher had washed her hands and was quietly and gingerly unwrapping the bundle, perhaps seeking to create a sense of mystery and importance. Michelle was confused and, if she was honest, slightly nervous.
The parcel unwrapped, the teacher presented a copy of the Qu’ran.
Michelle noticed that several of her classmates were looking at it with interest. For her own part, however, she felt slightly recoiled.
“Why have you brought THAT in here?”
Michelle’s tone was hard and loud.
“It’s just a book, isn’t it? Besides, it’s probably just full of instructions telling them how to kill people,” she said.
Where Were You on 9/11?
Michelle* was 1 year old when two aeroplanes were crashed into the New York Twin Towers on September 11th 2001. Now, sitting in her classroom at secondary school in England, she is almost 12 years old.
All that Michelle has known of Islam has been filtered through the lens of the news media, portraying an Islam of violence, and the opinions of her regular family. She is from a semi-rural part of England, a community with no Mosque and very few Muslims, far from the big pluralistic cities.
Is it any wonder, then, that fuelled by the ignorance of her culture and society, Michelle views terrorism as the same thing as Islam?
What is Islamophobia?
Now, in all honesty, there are criticisms of the term ‘Islamophobia’ that, for the purposes of talking about Michelle, are not really relevant. Whether or not you like the concept, the word has stuck and (in British schools) is a behavioural set that the government asks teachers to challenge and question.
Let me quote from the friendly and reliable Wikipedia:
The Runnymede (Trust) report identified eight perceptions related to Islamophobia:
- Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
- It is seen as separate and “other.” It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
- It is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.
- It is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilizations.
- It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
- Criticisms made of “the West” by Muslims are rejected out of hand.
- Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
- Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal.
The above perceptions are seen as closed views on Islam. These are contrasted, in the report, with open views on Islam which, while founded on respect for Islam, permit legitimate disagreement, dialogue and critique.
Michelle talked about “them” and she equated Muslims with people who “kill people”. Her language treated Islam as something ‘other’ and ‘separate’. Read that list again and you’ll see that while her political awareness might be suspect, at age 12, she was certainly expressing a single sentence in which the first four items were present. Further conversation revealed that the eighth point was also very prevalent within the wider classroom.
But it wasn’t really Michelle’s fault.
What Ideas Have Your Children Absorbed?
Each week the news media reports from around the world and presents a view of Islam to British readers/viewers which is distorted and biased, reinforcing the growing Islamophobia of the nation. A quick search of the websites of any newspaper will reveal articles which carefully present Muslims and Islam as ‘separate’ and ‘other’, emphasising difference of dress, behaviour, views and values. The view is one of an unchanging, monolithic institution opposed to the values of the liberal West. You would have to go a long way to find much reportage of the counter-balancing view.
In our homes we very often allow our own ignorance of Islam, and other world religions, to colour the attitudes of our children. Atheist and agnostic parents often state that religion is irrelevant to their children, telling themselves that only a priest would require such a knowledge and empathy. Christian parents are just as likely to dismiss learning about Islam as dangerous and subversive to their own children’s faith. And yet, as a consequence of their children’s ignorance, the workplace is filled with prejudice, fear and ignorance. A women walking into many places in Michelle’s’ rural community while wearing the Hijab will be treated with suspicion and quiet hostility.
In the schools, those bastions of education and socialisation, fewer and fewer senior leaders are prepared to prioritise the education of your children through the compulsory but often marginalised subject of Religious Education. Despite the proven ability of specialist teachers to educate children for a knowledge, understanding and empathy with different cultural groups, we are quietly allowing an often secular and uncaring management to reinforce our children’s Islamophobia through negligence. We live in a nation which is home to all of the major religions and yet we refuse to see the value of learning about the unifying principles that all of those groups share.
Don’t You Care?
Doesn’t it matter that your children might have picked up the wrong idea about Islam?
Don’t care if your kids quietly bully your neighbours children simply because your neighbours self-identify as Muslims?
Islamophobia, and more generally the hostility towards religious groups, is a growing concern for the West. Surely we need to be on guard against the prejudice and hatred that can be channelled towards the unwitting and law-abiding Muslims who live just next door to us.
Don’t forget the words of Adolf Hitler:
“What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.”
For “governments” you could insert words such as ‘media’ or ‘militarists’ with ease.
And, at the risk of seeming flippant, let’s not forget the wisdom of Yoda:
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
Do you dare risk the future for your children by, through the simple act of doing nothing, allowing them to learn to fear Islam?
__________
*Michelle is not her real name. I’ve changed it to protect her anonymity while giving you a real-life character to engage with.
Good article mate, but it does favour a little towards those media articles that you rightly criticise. I know I run the risk of annoying you by saying this, but at points this does read as a plug for RE support – one far written with greater skill that anything we see in the media though. I don’t think we need compulsory RE in education. We should however have the choice if we want to include it as a curricula option. RE can be used well as a cross curricula link but the question for me is would a citizenship syllabus do more for promoting understanding, individuality, morals and values than a compulsory RE subject that is often marginalised due to time pressure. And as one of the major impacts in civilisation, would it not be better to incorporate it into a wider understanding of society in a History syllabus?
In Michelle’s case what we need is for the development of critical skills within our school population. We need to encourage our children to look at every situation, especially ones like this, and be able to assess and deduce their own conclusions. Religious beliefs could easily be incorporated into a citizenship syllabus, with children encouraged to present and engage without fear or protectivism on their beliefs allowing them to gain a greater insight into how we can have debate, disagreement and difference but still operate as a community. Children are as capable of being contributory and critical members of their communities and societies but are as marginalised in the broader societal reflections as their family and friends.
Michelle is entitled to her opinion, but that opinion is one that should be forged in the fires of debate, research, critical evaluation and self reflection. Maybe if we encourage our children to approach life this way, we can encourgae the parents and community to follow. We cannot get rid of prejudice, there is some evidence to suggest that it is hard-wired into our fight/flight reflex. As teachers we must encourage people to be consistently challenging that prejudice, to evaluate and justify it or to fight it at every chance. This will move us towards a society where everyone is entitled to live in peace, but maybe not always harmony.
Good article fella, thanks.
@ Rat: it’s not just confined to Islam, I can still remember the time in a school when a child, out of disgust and fear, pushed a Bible off the table on to the floor by her fingertips on a corner of it.
@FH: two things. 1) it would take a considerable shift to get RE onto a History syllabus. Despite the claim that History is about assessing inuences and motives, one hears very little about it in the lives of the Clapham Sect, despite the influence of Wilberforce and Shaftesbury on the 19th Century (to choose but one example). 2) as a former co-ordinator of Citizenship, the short answer is, “not likely”. It is an entirely political and secularising agenda behind it. Of corse there are links, but it would be hard to persuade people to make something of it.
(sorry this is so abrupt, but my PC keyboard has packed in, and I’m doing this on my Palm, and I’m looking after the kiddies on a short 4 day break.)
@ Rev D – Wilberforce might not be the best example, it appears he could have been a hypocrite over slavery! I agree that you are right under current circumstances, but under those same circumstances teaching a Christian religious session is compulsory by Law. Dropping that would be considerable enough and would see enough influence from the various religious groups to get the bit in in other areas – ideally History and Citizenship, but also Geography, Art etc. I have said that its about being critical and engaging with opinions, something current schooling also doesn’t seem to support in anything like enough effectiveness needing another considerable effort.
This statement is simply not correct. Under Law, RE is compulsory in England. It must conform to the syllabus that is locally agreed within the Local Authority. The only provision nationally is to honour the statement under law that, as Britain is broadly a Christian nation, Christianity must form a part of that syllabus. Thus, as an RE teacher, you must be prepared to teach all six major religions in RE.
I will bow to your superior knowledge mate, especially considering what you are going through, but thats not how it was presented to us. However it doesn’t change the point. Dropping compulsory RE would not be as momentous or challenging as some of the changes that schools have gone through recently (past 40 years). Making it optional would also fit with today’s society of choice.
To get back to my point though. This is more a case of is your child capable of thinking for themselves, than is your child islamophobic. Can children today decide for themselves values, behaviours, standards and philosophies which can guide them through difficult situations and moral dilemmas? If your child is going to make stance, e.g. the belief that Islam is evil, can they support that position. Can they understand the difference between reasoned opposition and a fanatic adherence? Can they differentiate between the sort of crap media rubbish we are being presented with now, and more intellectual and researched pieces that we see on here from yourselves, let alone the academic/theological world. Thats more important to me.
@FH: Once again, my friend, I write this in the hope that you will not take offence and will allow me to give my heartfelt response to your challenging comments.
Re: Compulsory RE I feel, as do many in the profession, that there would be a far greater negative impact on both the education of our children and the state of the nation if it were abolished. Of course, that is a far larger topic and one, perhaps, best not aired here. Suffice to say, with the full disclosure of myself as a specialist RE teacher, the subject is under-appreciated, under-valued and unlikely (thankfully) to be abolished. A quick look at Hansard in relation to the 1988 Education Reform Act will reveal the importance the state places on the subject, if no-one else.
In relation to Islamophobia… well, I cannot help wonder if you are not over-egging the effect upon young minds of logic, critical analysis and reason to overcome deep-seated home-grown prejudice. People do not change their minds about ‘other’ groups through the application of logic and reason alone. They are affected by their passions and the emotive language of those who surround them, not least their parents. Only when people are confronted with the very real and negative consequences of their beliefs are they moved towards change.
Look at history: it took more than logic to change Black rights in the United States – it took a passionate marching of the populous, the assassination of a brave man, and the guilt of a nation facing the horror of the persecution they had tolerated for so long. It was not enough to change the law, and it is an ongoing challenge to all nations to this day. What about anti-Semitism? It took the horrors of Nazi Germany to move our nation towards change, and still today there are those who seek to deny the crimes committed.
If we are not careful then I fear we will see the rise of hatred against religious groups, such as Muslims, and will once again tolerate a great many cruelties… and all while you are still heatedly debating the critical value of our children’s belief that, as you put it, “Islam is evil.”
critical thinking skills have been in the various subjects for a while. I even subbed for a senior teacher on a critical thinking skills training course back in Sept. ’03. They are not a new initiative. The basic problem remains the same, i.e. the home-school conflict. Whatever the values/morals the school tries to impart, if the home doesn’t value education, or RE/PSHCE in particular, very little is actually achievable over the basic impartation of knowledge. For over a decade all my GCSE lessons contained ‘critical thinking’ by requiring the pupils to engage with the spectrum of choices/opinions on topics. My very jaded experience is that a small percentage (less than 10%) actually genuinely benefitted from this. The campaign to remove/downgrade RE won’t change this. Likewise, if teachers reflect the general barometer of public opinion, then thedownplay of religion will only ensure that there is little to no exposure to either religion or its positives if RE is removed. Especially if the removal of the topic of the Crusafes from History is anything to go by. In this case “head” and “sand” springs to mind.
Its always a challenge to tackle a subject as an proto-academic when dealing with two pratitioners 😉 – particularly when chasing the idea of dropping RE in the curriculum with such as you two! Still, as a representative of the atheists I would not forgive myself for not standing my corner. I am not convinced of the need for religion in school aside as a cultural or historical reference. Still as UR says that is a subject to tackle another day.
Sorry, looks like my quoting efforts above were a sham! was quoting this from UR:
If we are not careful then I fear we will see the rise of hatred against religious groups, such as Muslims, and will once again tolerate a great many cruelties… and all while you are still heatedly debating the critical value of our children’s belief that, as you put it, “Islam is evil.”
No problem, my friend, Re: the quoting. 🙂
It seems to me that we have a similar view, but with different emphases. You, on the one hand, seek to use the critical faculties of the historian to challenge students to think about their prejudices, and thus to change their minds. For me, on the other hand, there is the route of Religious Education which seeks to utilise the tools of critical analysis and combine them with the wisdom of human experience and intuition. Either way we can only change our pupils one child at a time. Forgive me if I seem the idealist but I cannot help but feel that all of society is made up single persons who, collectively, can change their hearts and minds for the better. Nuff said, from me at least.
Anyway, religion aside, thats no way to respect a book!
Just seen this as well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/24/islamism-schools-islam-west