The National Union of Teachers or “NUT” is demanding Imams be allowed into British classrooms to teach about the Koran in state sponsored “faith” schools.

Faith schools are part of the UK state sponsored system, in essence, these schools are not private. The union held a conference from which a list of demands evolved, demands which involve the inclusion of instruction of other faiths, mainly that of Islam. One such demand was that Imams should come into the schools to teach about the Islam faith and the Koran.

Steve Sinnot, the General Secretary of NUT, therefore one of the head “NUTs” believes letting Imams into the Christian faith schools to teach about the Koran will go a long way towards “reuniting communities”.

We wondered, just how does one become an Imam? What mosque would this Imam come from, and what beliefs would he teach to the schoolchildren?

Imams

According to Answers.com an Imam can be the male prayer leader in a mosque or a Muslim worshipper who leads the prayers with two or more other Muslim worshippers in attendance.

The Sunni bestow Imam status on the leader of the Friday prayer at the mosque while the Shiites consider Imans as legitimate leaders of their Muslim community.

We wondered what core beliefs, moderate or hardline, an Imam might have who was invited into the classrooms of British schoolchildren to teach about Islam.

In 2006 a survey was done by NOP Research on the current beliefs of British Muslims.

Here are some of the results from the survey:

45% of British Muslims said 9/11 was a conspiracy between the United States and Israel

25% believe the 2005 7/7 London bombings were justified because of British support for the Iraq war

35% of Muslims said they preferred to live under Sharia Law (Islamic Religious Laws) rather than British law

28% said they hoped Britain would some day become a fundamentalist Islamic state

78% support punishment for those who publish cartoons blasphemous to the Islam religion

68% support punishment for those who “insult Islam”.

62% said Free Speech should not be protected in the matter of offending religious groups

9% of the British Muslim population are considered “hard-core” while 29% are “slightly more moderate” and who are “staunch defenders of Islam”

Who Controls the British Mosques?

Back in September, 2007, the Times Online wrote of the hardline Islam sect called the Deobandis who have now taken control of almost half of the country’s 1350 mosques. The leading preacher, Riyadh ul Haq, supports “armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus and is in line to become the spiritual leader” of the entire sect.

The movement has taken over more than 600 of Britain’s 1350 mosques. The Deobandis movement is also credited with “giving birth” to the Taleban in Afghanistan.

Seventeen of 26 of Britain’s Islamic seminaries are run by the Deobandies and they produce 80% of the “home-grown” Muslim clerics.

Videos which were intended for a “Muslim only” audience show numerous talks and sermons where the hardliners believe music is the conduit from which Jews spread a “satanic web” to corrupt young Muslims.

Another sermon, in the weeks before 9/11 praises “Muslims who have gained martyrdom in battle and laments that today “no one dare utter the “J” word. The J word has become taboo… the J word is jiahd in the way of Allah.”

Khaled Ahmed, a political commentator in Pakistan, said the British government had a “blind ignorance” in regards to the proliferation of the Deobandies and their teachings in their country, that in Britain, the Deobandies’ message was even more extreme than that in Pakistan.

Now the National Union of Teachers, or NUT, has demanded that Imams should be allowed into the state sponsored Faith schools to “teach” students about Islam in the guise of diversity and equal opportunity religion.

Will NUT vet the Imams before they are allowed to come into a school and teach their “beliefs”?

There’s a distinct possibility that an Imam invited into the schools could be a hardliner since they have taken over almost 50% of the British mosques and teach in secret to their followers and cleric to hold contempt for other religions, the Jews, Christians, and Hindus, that women should go back to wearing the burka, that “shedding blood” for Allah in order to destroy Western values is okay. These are types of beliefs an Imam may bring into the schools in the guise of the “religion of peace”.

The hypocrisy of Mr. Sinnot and NUT took another step further when they also demanded that daily religious assemblies, predominantly Christian, be disbanded while private Muslim prayer facilities be added.

The Union also demanded the schools lose the right to chose which students to accept and instead hand it over to local authorities.

As for our opinion, we find the acronym for the National Union of Teachers, NUT, in this case, to be brilliantly apropos.

By LBG

Image – Cartoon
Source - CBSNews – Many British Muslims Put Islam First
Source – Times Online – Hardline Takeover of British mosques
Source – Daily Express: Fury over plan to teach Koran in Schools

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