Muslim schools ban our culture

Youngsters are discouraged from playing cricket and board games, listening to western music and even reading Shakespeare plays or Harry Potter books by fanatics targeting classrooms, the research says.

Some children are even being told to shun “the evil system of western culture” and encouraged to live in “ghettos”.

The vile diktats to Muslim pupils, some of primary school age, appear on school websites or on other internet sites linked directly to school sites and operated by fund amentalist groups. Critics last night called for strict vetting of Muslim education to root out extremist influence. Moderate Muslim groups welcomed the findings and called for the attempts by extremists to target children to be stamped out.

The propaganda is highlighted in a report called Music, Chess and Other Sins from the Westminster-based think tank Civitas.

Author Denis MacEoin investigated hundreds of school websites and Islamic websites linked to schools to uncover the material.

He made clear that only a small number of the more than 120 Muslim schools in Britain were involved. But those that were posed a serious threat to social cohesion, the report said.

It highlights a number of websites, including one “fatwa” site linked to a school which warned a boy that his ambition of playing cricket for Pakistan was “a sacrilegious waste of time”. Another said children should be banned from reading “shameless fiction” or play ing games such as Ludo or Monopoly. It also said: “The person who plays chess is like the one who dips his hands in the blood of a swine.”

Another website said: “One should abstain from evil audacities such as listening to music” and calls the Royal College of Music “satanic”. The website of a Muslim girls’ school in London said: “Our children are exposed to a culture that is in opposition to almost everything Islam stands for.”

Another website, of the governing body of a primary school in Yorkshire, praises the woman “who keeps herself indoors or keeps herself hidden in a veil”. The report called for Ofsted inspectors to be trained to spot offensive material. It also urged the vetting of imams associated with schools.

Moderate Muslims yesterday said it was right that the encouragement of religious hatred in schools was exposed.

Maajid Nawaz, director of the Quilliam Foundation, a think tank set up to counter Islamic extremism, said: “If this is what is written on websites, I dread to think what is going on in classrooms.

“We respect people’s freedom to choose their own religion but not to encourage hatred. This crosses the boundaries.” But the Association of Muslim Schools UK dismissed the report as misleading, intolerant and divisive.

“It contains rhetoric which is not only inaccurate but also breeds distrust and disharmony and adds nothing positive or constructive to the debate,” it said.

“We are particularly disappointed but not surprised that the report has been drafted and edited by individuals who have a track record of producing literature that is divisive, poorly researched and does not stand up to serious independent scrutiny. The authors did not visit a single Muslim school.”

The Department of Children, Families and Schools said: “All maintained schools, faith and non-faith, have a statutory duty to promote community cohesion.

“Schools must have clear internet policies, on internal and external websites, which protect young people from inappropriate mater ial. We have asked the author of this report for sight of his evidence.”