"The disbelievers, they are the worst of all people. The Hindus drink piss, I've told you this. Do they have any intellect? No."Welcome to this morning's assembly, boys and girls. In accordance with our statutory obligations in our daily act of collective worship, we are going to talk of something that is 'broadly Christian': the filth that is those who do not believe in Islam; the fact that Hindus drink their own piss; and the belief that idolators have no intellect. Do we all know the difference between fact and belief? No? Well, when I say what I believe, it is a fact. And if you disrespect that, I'll hit you. Hard. Understand? Good.
Anyone who saw last night's C4 Dispatches 'Lessons in Hate and Violence' on the 'Muslim Eton' must be wondering today how the LibDem MP John Hemming can possibly defend this school and assert that it is 'doing its job properly' (yes, a professing liberal defending 'hate speech', social segregation, religious apartheid and the beating of children).
The accusations that C4 'distorted the truth' and took quotations 'out of context' are exactly the sort of knee-jerk defence offered against their previous documentary 'Undercover Mosque'. The school has apparently closed early for half-term, out of fear of attacks by the English Defence League.
Right.
Does the EDL have a history of violent action against schools or threats against children? Have specific ones been received? If so, investigations must be immediate and arrests made. But His Grace is of the view that the school's premature closure is nothing to do with the C4 documentary being 'ideal fodder for the EDL'. It has closed because of the truth, and it is a truth which has been long-known: in some sharia schools, children are beaten and abused, and the authorities - police, social services, LEA, MPs - have turned a blind eye for the sake of multicultural sensitivites.
If corporal punishment is prohibited in all state and independent schools – as the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act clearly intended – then it is difficult to see why madrasahs are exempt.
Do not Muslim children have an equal right under the law as those of other faiths to be protected from abuse? Why are we tolerating a culture of violence and physical oppression in some Islamic schools while all the others are constrained by law to encourage, uplift, edify and generally mollycoddle and wrap in cotton wool? Good grief, pupils are not now even permitted to come last in a sporting event or fail an exam lest their fragile egos be deflated and their delicate sense of self-worth be damaged, causing life-long developmental trauma and irreparable emotional retardation.
The Prime Minister has pledged to cease the toleration of this malignant manifestation of religio-political poison: all children must be equal under the law, and Muslim children in Britain should expect to be protected against this sort of mental, emotional, spiritual and physical abuse. To teach that the non-Muslim is dirty, that Hindus 'drink their own piss' and that they 'have no intellect' is the very genesis of the Islamist supremacist ideology. The Prime Minister has signalled that he understands this. We would not tolerate a school teaching such things against Jews, so why does the Education Secretary not order an immediate investigation and invasive Ofsted inspection?
Ah, there's the problem: 'invasive Ofsted inspection' is something of an oxymoron, for schools like this are given a clean bill of health by HM Inspectorate of Education every year. Ofsted obligingly send headteachers days of notice - ample time to stow away the sharia textbooks; encourage problem pupils to take a few days off; prime the staff with the right things to say and hand-pick the most favoured children to sing the school's praises. And the headteacher has at least two days to rehearse a jolly nice show of social cohesion and inter-faith respect.
The tragedy is not that C4 have misrepresented the school, as ludicrously asserted by John Hemming MP (mindful of his electorate), but that all faith schools, and, in particular, all Muslim schools, will be tarnished with the same brush and viewed with the same suspicion. This is 'ideal fodder' not for the EDL, but for the aggressive secularists at the BHA and the NSS, whose song sheet is tediously monotone in calling for the abolition of all faith-based education.
Thank God the Coalition is not taking us down that desert path. It is a fundamentally Conservative principle that parents must be free to educate their children as they wish. But this must be in accordance with the customs and traditions of the country, in particular with the foundational tenets of liberal democracy. It is for this reason that we must maintain the 'broadly Christian' dimension of state-based education - in the curriculum and in the daily assembly, for that which is 'broadly Christian' can be offensive to no-one. Clearly, some extremist schools are failing to fulfil their statutory obligations. A few week ago, Michael Gove announced: "A due diligence unit will monitor applications for new schools and arrangements in existing schools so there's no risk of extremism taking hold."
This is long overdue. And still we await the details.
