07/02/2010
Remember the famous aphorism of Ayatollah Khomeini: “There is no fun in Islam”?
Apparently there are no symphonies either, judging from the latest culture fracas in diverse Britain. A number of Islo-parents are removing their offspring from music classes in spite of a national requirement that all students take part in them.
How extreme. What other culture prohibits music? It is so basic to humanity.
Muslim pupils ‘withdrawn from music lessons’ London Telegraph, July 1, 2010
Muslim children are being withdrawn from music lessons because some families believe learning an instrument is anti-Islamic, it has emerged.
A number of schools are allowing Muslim parents to pull their children out of classes, even though the subject is a formal part of the national curriculum.
Dr Diana Harris, a lecturer at the Open University, said she had visited schools where half of pupils were withdrawn from music during Ramadan.
By law, children are supposed to take part in all subjects and parents can only remove children from sex and religious education.
But Dr Harris claimed Ofsted inspectors sometimes turned “a blind eye” to the issue.
In one London primary school, 20 pupils were removed from rehearsals for a Christmas musical and one five-year-old girl has been permanently withdrawn from all classes.
The details emerged in a BBC London News investigation.
Eileen Ross, head of Herbert Morrison Primary in Lambeth, where almost a third of children come from mainly Somalian Muslim families, said some parents “don’t want children to play musical instruments and they don’t have music in their homes”.
“There’s been about 18 or 22 children withdrawn from certain sessions, out of music class, but at the moment I just have one child who is withdrawn continually from the music curriculum,” she said. “It’s not part of their belief, they feel it detracts from their faith.”
There has been a debate in the Muslim community about music and singing, with some followers claiming that they are forbidden.
Dr Harris, author of the book “Music Education and Muslims”, told the BBC: “Most of them really didn’t know why they were withdrawing their children.
“The majority of them were doing it because they had just learned that it wasn’t acceptable and one of the sources giving out that feeling was the Imams particularly Imams who had come over from Pakistan, didn’t really speak English and felt threatened.
And why is it again that they come to live in the West? Certainly not to share in the best our culture has to offer.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.