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Why does a practising Muslim send his kids to a Jewish school?
11/05/2007 18:56
Spent the night staying with Abdullah and his family in Birmingham. His children are a lot better behaved than mine (and older) so my sleep was blissfully uninterrupted.
Breakfast with the family, before taking the children to school. Here’s the interesting part – his three Muslim children go to a local faith school - a Jewish faith school. King David Primary school, which is massively oversubscribed, has a mixed roll with some 60 per cent of pupils from Muslim families, around a third from Birmingham’s Jewish community and the rest a mixture of Christians and Sikhs. The day starts with some prayers in Hebrew, led by the head of Jewish religious studies.
My obvious question to Abdullah – why do you, a practising Muslim, send your kids to a Jewish school? – does not get just the obvious answer: good discipline and good results. On top of that, the very fact that the school has a faith and a strong ethos is seen, at least by Abdullah and his family, as a positive advantage.
To those who think that faith schools are part of the problem and prevent us from building a more cohesive society this tale has a powerful message – far from being part of the problem, schools like King David’s are actually part of the solution. They can promote integration and cohesion, instil discipline, teach the basics, inspire young minds and raise their aspirations – all at the same time.
Later in the day I visit a private Muslim school, the Al-Hira school. Again, some Muslim schools, particularly private ones, have been criticised for encouraging separateness, rather than shared values. I quiz the head about this issue. She accepts that this is a problem in some schools, but in her current job her answer is straightforward and encouraging – her whole philosophy is about opening up the school to the whole community, to dispel any suspicions there may be about “what goes on there.” The school teaches the National Curriculum, and as I walked round, meeting pupils and teachers, it was obvious – from the wall charts about Shakespeare and Richard III to the confident and outward-going manner of the kids – that this is a school that’s helping to strengthen community cohesion, not undermine it.
In fact, the head teacher is totally committed to getting this school into the state sector where it can expand, take more non-Muslim pupils and have access to more resources The current fees are much lower than usual for a private school, £1,500 a year, and that’s many thousands less than the cost of a state school place.
Today Al-Hira’s pass rate at GCSE is 25 per cent. While that’s better than the worst state schools it is still quite poor. The head is confident that she can get it up to 50 and then 75 per cent. If she is right then a new Muslim faith school in the state sector in this part of Birmingham could, along with King David, play a valuable role in tacking the acute shortage of good school places.
As for the rest of the day it’s made up of a number of visits, a few meetings, filming a clip for webcameron about Tony Blair’s announcement (finally!) of his departure timetable - and quite a bit of work.
The work includes cleaning up a city council owned car park with members of the Balshall Heath Forum and volunteers, and helping take the moss and grass off what ought to be a red dirt, all weather football pitch. I also spend some more time behind the cash till in a neighbourhood shop.
Cleaning the car park I come across a discarded syringe and needle. While helping clear the football pitch I chat with an ex-con who’s now living above a crack house which he says the police still haven’t closed. But the story of how the Forum and its neighbourhood patrols cleared a lot of the drug dealers and prostitutes off the streets is an inspiring one. They literally refused to put up with them, picketing the streets, posting the names of kerb crawlers to their wives and offices and forcing the council to evict the drug dealers.
The ex-con (who is white) is still unconvinced, telling me the Forum is just “Asians looking after their own.” I point out that the team clearing the football pitch includes white people, British Asians and Afro-Caribbeans working together, but he simply won’t listen to anything that challenges his bone-headed racial stereotype. Depressing.
The nature of the community work raises an interesting question.
Where you have great community groups like the Forum doing things in and for their local community, why is it so hard for them to get more responsibility and more money?
Real devolution should mean giving them the right to say to the council: “we’re carrying out useful work on behalf of the community that we are doing in your place, and we’d like the resources that should go with it.”
Put more simply, the last Conservative government gave council tenants the right to own their council house; shouldn’t the next one give local people, through such local forums, the right to own and run their parks, community centres and public spaces?
It’s been a fascinating couple of days.
Saying goodbye to Abdullah at Birmingham New Street I’m embarrassed with his gifts of T-shirts, shoes and a traditional robe which he says will be perfect for any visit I make to Pakistan.
It’s yet another reminder that, as I blogged yesterday, integration is a two way street and if we want to remind ourselves of British values – hospitality, tolerance and generosity to name just three - there are plenty of British Muslims ready to show us what those things really mean.
Posted by canvas 11/05/2007 19:55:46
Subject: confused
David, I'm confused by this last paragraph?
"It’s yet another reminder that, as I blogged yesterday, integration is a two way street and if we want to remind ourselves of British values – hospitality, tolerance and generosity to name just three - there are plenty of British Muslims ready to show us what those things really mean."
What, as opposed to British Christians??
Please explain... Thank you!
Posted by savethepublicsectortheprivateinvasion 11/05/2007 20:21:32
Subject: my view
i think he meant that we shouldn't always blame the Britsh Muslims for being the ones that don't want to integrate! sometimes just sometimes theres always someone who wants to deter them or just not get involved themselves.. just like that man in the 8th video.
Posted by canvas 11/05/2007 21:41:20
Subject: I get it now
Thanks, savethepublicsectortheprivateinvasion . I just watched video 8/8 and it's all clear now. I thought DC's wording was slightly ambigous - but that was before I watched video 8/8. It is depressing that some people are so blinkered in their views...
Posted by canvas 11/05/2007 22:10:39
Subject:
ambiguous too.
Posted by Tizzy 12/05/2007 15:50:17
Subject: FROM
Can we have access to 'from' on the forum, please?
Posted by Starbush 13/05/2007 07:34:33
Subject: thanks for the Brum initative
I have to say (as a 'never have voted Tory' person) that David Cameron has zoomed up in my estimation as a result of this initiative in Birmingham. An intitiative that I imagine will not go down well witih some factions of his party or its sympathisers. He shows a surprising naturalness and lack of ego, and readiness to learn, which I can't imagine Blair showing in a similar initiative. Nor do I think Gordon would be comfortable in chatting to people in the way Dave does. And Cameron certainly hasn't done a whitewash job on the Muslim community; eg in another post he pointed out some of the worrying denials over 7/7 and 9/11 that he found among a minority. Re the last para of this posting, Muslims are forever being accused of segregation by politicians and others, and of not respecting British values (see Jack Straw's recent Chatham House paper) so of course his focus in mentioning the British values he found is on Muslims in this particular context. I find these posts on his Birmingham field trip revealing and humanising.
Posted by 8pennylane 13/05/2007 13:34:57
Subject: Faith Schools
Dear David,
its a pleasant surprise when i stumbled upon your blog, it was a funny coincidence that this happened the day i wrote about you in my blog
http://whitesroad.blogspot.com/
We don't have environmentally conscious priests in any religion. Chooping a tree is not a sin.
i am in Chennai India, and i am a Muslim. In my opinion encouraging faith schools would further widen the divide and there would be further isolation as it is happening now for various reasons. These issues take us away from the environmental problems which need to be addressed with utmost urgency.
M.A. Rauf
Chennai, india
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