Panorama on the teaching of Sharia Law and intolerance in UK schools

I watched Monday's Panorama programme but thought I would leave the blogging until I had seen if anything positive came out of it. The programme itself contained few if any surprises, shockingly Islamic schools teach Islamic law and that means homosexuality punishable by death by stoning, burning in fire or being thrown off a cliff, thieving by amputation (first of a hand then of the diagonally opposite foot), adultery by stoning etc. etc. etc. This was blamed on the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education's influence and textbooks. Now I am no supporter of Saudi Arabia but if you have only just discovered that their schools promote Sharia Law and hatred of people of other faiths, especially Jews, then you really have had your head in the sand for a long time. The King Fahd school in Acton (London W3) was exposed some years ago here's my piece from August 2007 reporting the story and here's my piece from February 2008 reporting in part that:

'The school agreed to destroy these books however it appears from today's Daily Mail that "Under public pressure the Academy eventually agreed to destroy 2,000 books but photocopied them first for future use, he told the tribunal."'

As I wrote in 2008:

'as of March 2007 the Telegraph was reporting that "More than half of private Muslim schools have not been inspected for five years, while some have not received a full inspection for a decade. An analysis of the 114 independent Islamic schools in England registered with the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) has found that Ofsted reports are available for only 53. Most of these involve recent visits, but two reports are for the 1997-98 academic year. Most of the other 61 schools, and their 6,000 pupils, were inspected five or more years ago but, because of a gap in the law, their reports have never been made public. The law has now been changed, but is not retrospective."

The report ended "An Ofsted official said: "Since the introduction of the Education Regulations 2003, there has been a cycle for the inspection of all -independent schools who are not members of the Independent Schools Council and covered by their inspectorate. "Ofsted has not yet completed the first full cycle of reported inspections, but it will be completed by the end of March 2008." If a school had no published report it had not yet had a full reported inspection, but would have one in the next year."

Of course this will not now be the case as this Labour Government announced this month that Muslim private schools would no longer be subject to Ofsted inspections but would instead be inspected by the Bridge Schools' Inspectorate which would be more "sensitive" in its inspections of Muslim schools.


This situation is not going to end well for this country.'

Just as following the 2007 investigation we were told that the textbooks were being taken out of context:

'the principal of the King Fahd Academy in Acton, an Islamic school in West London, who admitted that the school uses textbooks which describe Jews as "apes" and Christians as "pigs" and has refused to withdraw them. Dr Sumaya Alyusuf was interviewed on Newsnight back in February when she said that the quotations about apes and pigs had been taken out of context. I would like to know the context and how Dr Alyusuf thinks that it was alright to liken the majority of people in this country as apes. You can read more about this story here.'

This time The Standard reports that:

'The former president of a network of part-time Muslim schools today defended the teaching of sharia law.

...

Ahmed Meliebary, who was president of the group in 2001, said amputations as a punishment for theft was part of the koran's teachings on sharia law.

He said: “Cutting off the hand is the maximum penalty for stealing but there are strict set of conditions that need to be met before it is done. It is a way of telling students not to steal but in a different way and by teaching the maximum punishment it acts as a deterrent. If it used for first-timers they are not meeting the strict condition for this type of punishment to happen.”

...

But he said he had never seen a Saudi textbook which taught that sodomy should be punished by death, and denied that the schools inflamed anti-Semitic sentiment.
“Jews are our cousins as they come from the same forefathers,” he said. “The teachers are screened before coming here and requested to fit into the UK ideas of tolerance.”'

If you missed the Panorama programme then you can watch it in two parts below





Read more on this subject, there's plenty available out there, and judge for yourselves what Sharia Law and its proponents teach. Then ask yourselves how happy you are that British schoolchildren are being taught to hate Jews, that thieving should be punishable by amputation and that homosexuals should be killed.