Islamic ‘Sunday School’ Told Girls to Have Children Instead of Careers

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JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty
Victoria Friedman

A school in Slough will no longer rent space to a madrassa after it was revealed it taught Muslim girls they should have children instead of careers and hosted speakers at events who had described non-Muslims as “pigs.”

The Langley Academy has terminated its contract with the Al-Miftah Institute, which provided ‘IslamHood’ Sunday school classes in its school buildings, following complaints from a member of the public and the National Secular Society (NSS) which said that the group was hosting “extremist speakers” whose messages contradict “fundamental British values.”

The school has been renting premises for the group’s ‘Youth Tarbiya Weekend School’ on Sundays which delivered an “Islamic curriculum for 7-18 year olds” which included Quran recitation and “Islamic Sciences,” according to the NSS.

A spokesman for the school told The Telegraph, “We fully support the government’s Prevent Strategy. Therefore we take any allegations that extremist views or ideology might be being promoted on our premises extremely seriously. We were deeply concerned when a complaint was first raised with the Trust about IslamHood’s Weekend School in December.

“We have carried out an in-depth investigation and the lettings agreement with IslamHood has been terminated with immediate effect.”

In one IslamHood class, Shaykh Shams Ad-Duha Muhammad said “smart career women give it up to have children,” and was said to have told female pupils at the Slough and Eton School in 2015 that those women who do not have children should “say sorry because you’re not a mum, because you’re delaying that one thing that you would actually take fulfilment from.”

The group was also accused of gender segregation, after photographs in IslamHood’s prospectus showed girls standing together behind the boys, the picture taken inside Langley Academy, as reported by the newspaper.

Dr Paul Stott of The Henry Jackson Society said, “IslamHood’s teaching on the role of women is sexist and risks girls never achieving their full potential. Langley Academy should have conducted due diligence at the outset. This type of response needs to become the norm across the public sector.”

The National Secular Society raised concern over the group’s activities to the Langley Academy and highlighted in January that IslamHood had hosted speakers “such as Imran Ibn Mansur and Haitham al-Haddad, both widely regarded as advocates of extremist forms of Islam.”

Mansur had appeared at a 2015 IslamHood conference, implying to its young attendants that those who were friends with others who were not observant Muslims would burn in hell.  In a 2017 Facebook video, he had referred to non-Muslims as “infidels,” “pigs,” and “kuffar” (derogatory term for non-believer).

Al-Haddad had spoke about non-Muslims being thrown into the fiery pits of hell at an IslamHood lecture in 2014 and is known to have expressed approval of child marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM), and the stoning to death of adulterers.

This is just the most recent case of children being exposed to those who espouse Islamic extremism in settings where they are meant to be safe.

Telegraph investigations in January into scout programmes led by Muslim groups in Birmingham and Lewisham resulted in the suspension of two volunteers over child safeguarding concerns.

Hussain Al-Rawni, who runs the 304th Birmingham Scout Group, on behalf of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), was suspended over alleged links to the fundamentalist Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

The Scout Association also suspended Ahammed Hussain, leader of the south London Lewisham Islamic Centre’s scout programme, over safeguarding issues related to alleged extremism.

The newspaper reported that the Scout Association had referred six other mosques to the police over extremism concerns.

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