A homework assignment given to school children on the island of Guernsey asks 13-year-olds to write a letter to their parents explaining why they are converting to Islam. The assignment, created by Religious Education teacher Miss Amber Stables at the Les Beaucamp High School, asks kids to, “Complete the letter you started or started planning in class to your family on how you are converting to Islam.” “Include: How you’re feeling, how becoming a Muslim has changed your life, how much you love your family and hope they can accept your choice,” states the assignment. “Focus: How would it make you feel having to tell your parents this?? How would/could they react?” Perhaps cognizant of the backlash that may be caused by the assignment, a proviso was added to the text which states, “Please also note this is a piece of creative writing and completely fictional YOU ARE NOT ACTUALLY CONVERTING TO ISLAM. It is purely to test your knowledge of what we have learnt this year and how well you can argue objectively!!!!” Although the story has been circulating on Internet forums, it has yet to receive any national press attention. In 2014, the UK education system was hit by scandal when it was revealed that influential Muslims had planned to launch an Islamist plot to take over schools in Birmingham. “Even if this is just an exercise to test the pupil’s knowledge it is not something that would be acceptable to many parents, both for those who have religious beliefs of their own, and for secular parents who may have issues with the corrosive influence that Islam has on non-Muslim societies,” notes the Fahrenheit 211 blog. “Islam-appeasing teachers such as Miss Stables are pushing a view of Islam that is completely divorced from reality. Imagine how it must feel for a parent of a daughter to find that she is being asked to write positively about joining a religion where women are not just second class citizens, but where they are considered as the property of men.” As we have previously highlighted, there seems to be an emerging trend across education systems in the west not just to teach children about Islam in religious studies, but to ask them to embrace and celebrate a belief system that many feel is regressive, intolerant, and incompatible with secular liberal society. Last month, we reported on a school in Austria that gave 10-year-olds the homework task of learning the words to a Christian hymn with the word ‘God’ substituted for the word ‘Allah’. The incident dovetailed with a professor from the University of Vienna publishing a report warning of rapid Islamization of Austria’s schools. Last December, a video also emerged of Canadian children singing a ‘refugees welcome’ song which celebrates Muhammad’s arrival in Medina after he forced Christians to convert to Islam under threat of death. Parents were also angered by similar incidents in California and Minnesota, with schools forcing children to sing Muslim ‘fighting’ songs and songs about spreading the culture of Islam.
