Islam in Scotland
& The Educational Needs of Muslim Children

May I begin in the traditional muslim way, in the Name of the All-Merciful and All-Compassionate - if that's not seen as too terribly anti-academic. But it's an excuse to show you what I used to do when I worked as a calligrapher.

Islam in Scotland was supposed to be Ahmad Andrews' topic, as it's his special interest and approach, the various muslim groupings, their roots and branches and what differentiates them. As I also know a bit about it however, Malory asked me to cover it, but I must say that I am always in two minds with regard to reductive analysis, this process of reducing things to a myriad definable separate parts.

In fact, when talking to educationists I always stress that the recognition of muslim variety is a first essential, as many of the difficulties that non-muslims have when trying to relate to the muslim community stem from an urge to homogenise it and search for one voice that speaks for them all.

But muslims comprise a sixth of the world's population, belong to every ethnic group in countries surrounding the globe, and have been around for over fourteen hundred years. As with the Christian world, there has been and is a fairly wide variety of individuals and organisations in there. With regard to the view of things Islamic as uniform and isomorphous, one needs to substitute "Christianity" for "Islam" to see how ridiculous the picture will look. Revolutionary Nicaraguan Jesuitism is a far cry from the politics of the Reverend Ian Paisley, or, for that matter the Maronites of Lebanon. Try asserting the essential identity of Cathars, Flagellants, Rasputin and the Dutch Reformed Church and you would quickly be laughed out of Court - but people regularly make equivalent comparisons with regard to the muslim world.

My fears of reductive analysis are also quite strong, however, as when those with little knowledge of a broader picture concentrate on examining details of difference it can lead to a bizarre perception of the nature of the beast. Dissection may make it easier to examine the biological mechanics of a butterfly, but you no longer get to see it flutter.

The global variety of muslims can be seen reflected in the muslim population now living permanently or temporarily in Scotland, with all the friendships and feuds, agreements and arguments that might be found in the billion strong muslim population strung around the world. And as few non-muslims even have a clear idea of the difference between Sunni and Shi'a, rather than a discussion of doctrinal difference I thought it might be more useful to talk of the relationship between the community and its mosques.

Until the 1960's very few muslims lived in Scotland, and almost all had been born in muslim countries overseas. Some had come to Scotland to settle and find work, and some were here to study at the Universities and colleges. They were from the Arab and African countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, Persia, India and Bangladesh, but most were from Pakistan.

On Fridays they would meet in someone's house, at their workplace, or in a room at the University, to make their Jummah Salat together. As the number of muslims in the community grew, more space was needed to cope, and in those areas where there were a lot of muslims they would join together and buy a building to use as a mosque.

Mosques are not like churches. There is rarely any hierarchical organisation of clergy, and they are usually run by an ad-hoc committee formed from those who financed the building, who employ someone to look after the mosque and act as the Imam for the five daily prayers. He will give the sermon at the Friday prayer and usually run classes in Qur'an for the children.

Different mosques would cater for the different language communities, Urdu, Bengali, Farsi, etc. (though it is possible for any muslim to pray in any mosque, as the Salat and the Qur'an are always in Arabic), and different mosques are often maintained by various organisations based in the country of origin of the local mosque community.

There are a variety of mosques in most of the main cities in Scotland - the bigger the population the more the variety. In Glasgow the last time I counted there were a dozen, serving a population of between 20 and 30 thousand (depending on who you ask). Only two have been purpose built, and the rest are in converted small terraced houses, in large detached houses, in adapted commercial buildings or converted church halls.

Mosques are not just there for prayers, however, they are also community centres, and perhaps more importantly centres of community prestige, funding and political power, and the cut and thrust of that side of them can sometimes make them seem very remote from the spirit. In Glasgow we have two Shi'a mosques (one Iran-led, one Iraqi-led), one Bengali mosque, an Arab centre, the U.K.Islamic Mission or the Jama'at Islami, a Barelwi mosque, a Tablighi Jama'at mosque, the cash-and-carry Central Mosque and so on. And then there are the weekend and night schools, of which there are more than the mosques (with at least four Arabic language schools for a start - including two Libyan schools and a Saudi school). Plus, there are well over a thousand Malaysian students, Indonesians, Nigerians, and on and on (and to cap it all a large Ahmadiyya centre, the members of which are considered non-muslim heretics by all the others) - really quite outside the scope of a brief survey.

So, having recognised that the muslims have their differences, what do they have in common?

(OHP Umbrella) This is a diagram I use to show one way to approach it. I have been known to extemporise around this for several hours, but I will try and do it in five minutes.

Amidst all their differences muslims share a common human trait, and tend to reinforce their personal tastes and beliefs by seeing them as normative. For non-muslims with no personal contact with muslims, it can be very difficult to find out what the muslim world community really have in common, and establish an Islamic framework from which to examine and evaluate muslim differences of opinion. For those having limited contact with a small number of muslims, that task may often seem even harder.

One may be told that imagery is forbidden in Islam, yet remain aware that in the muslim world advertising images abound, images of the local ruler gaze down from nearly every wall, and the flickering images on the TV screen are as prevalent as anywhere else in the world. One may hear that music is forbidden, yet know that muslims all around the world have their own regional folk songs and musical traditions that can be heard on the local radio, or bought as cassettes in the local market. Styles of dress that are considered essential in some regions are clearly not universal, and practices that some muslims make central to their worship are denounced as unislamic by others. When considering the huge cultural variety of the muslim world, how can it be sorted into some kind of order?

The first key to avoid confusion is to recognize that the word "Islam" is used in two very different ways. It has both a general and a specific meaning. Its general meaning would be better expressed as "The World of Islam", and is used as an umbrella term to embrace all the cultural variety of the muslims, with their different languages, literary traditions, fashions and foods, tastes in art and architecture, social norms and niceties etc. This world of Islam is based on the interrelationship of three areas of muslim experience known as Ihsan, Iman, and Islam in its specific meaning. Here the word Islam refers only to the Five Pillars of Islamic practice (those things which distinguish muslims from everybody else). Iman, translated as faith or belief, relates to those aspects of creation which are beyond logical proof, but which we need to understand for our life experience to be based on truth (a language that muslims share with believers of several other faiths). Ihsan translates as goodness and is the language of moral values (a language that muslims share with the human community at large).

The understandings covered by these three terms are interwoven throughout all areas of muslim life. All knowledge (known in Arabic as 'Ilm) is founded on them, and the muslim concept of worship (Ibadat) is not restricted to the five pillars but extends through Iman and Ihsan throughout the whole of a muslim's life experience. All three terms are integral to Deen, the Islamic way of life, and hence to Shari'ah, the definition of that way of life in terms of the necessary legal structure required for a muslim community to live together in harmony. Of course, the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet, as the foundation of all Islamic understanding, should not be seen as topics separate from the above, but ubiquitous in all areas of the Islamic way of life.

Inevitably, any brief summary of the subject is going to be simplistic, and this view is not meant to be normative, but in general there would be recognition of the components of this outline throughout most of the muslim world, though individuals and groups within the Ummah would give different stress to different components. Some would give great importance to concepts not included. Sufi groups might prefer to set the above in a whole terminology of esoteric structures and concepts. Shi'a muslims would certainly consider the concept of the Imamate to be in a similar ubiquitous position to the Qur'an and Sunnah in the diagram, and would probably prefer to approach some of the other terms through the subject of 'Adl (justice) which is not in the diagram either.

So although the overview may be useful, its limitations must be recognised. In fact, what is perhaps the most central concept in the world of Islam, Tauhid is missing (though it would of its nature be intrinsic). So just take it as one useful comprehensive view of a complex and subtle subject.

In fact, one problem for those who have gained their knowledge of Islam from text books is that, believe it or not, muslims don't just put the text book formulas into practise. Muslims rarely mention it in public, but as with Christians, there are lots of Births Marriages and Deaths muslims around.

One thing most muslims do share is a common concern for their kids. When I came back to this country 16 years ago it was clearly a major concern, and little has changed for them since. They came to me saying "We are losing our children. We send them to school, and by the time that they leave they want nothing to do with us or Islam." Their concern then, as now was whether their children could integrate without assimilation. Akbar Ahmed in "Living Islam" uses a telling phrase about the muslims of Stornaway "This Muslim community in Stornoway is an example of a minority that is almost invisible and well integrated." A concern is that integration is seen as something that requires invisibility, a view that is supported somewhat by the SCRE MiniPaper "Class, Race and Gender in Schools", which suggests that although when Asian students are in a minority teachers view them with a positive "meek" caricature,  Mac an Ghaill has suggested that in schools where there is a majority Asian student population with a mainly white minority, the teachers dominant images of Asian youths suddenly appear to be negative.

Invisible integration or assimilation? Muslims are clearly concerned that the more their children are assimilated the less they have in common with their parents.

But child-centred education tends to have concern for the needs of the child, and to a certain extent society (usually meaning the economy), if necessary at the expense of the perceived needs of the parent. So let's look at children's needs. (I must point out that from the standpoint of my antiquity, I tend to use the word children to cover an educational range of about zero to thirty) Of course there is a need for technical skills like reading, writing and arithmetic, and information to incorporate and manipulate, like science, geography and history or whatever. The names change according to fashion, but we know what we mean, and the education system is almost entirely set up for teaching and assessing such topics.

Then there is that much more intangible area that deals with understanding life and the self. Issues of identity, and relationships and purpose, which the system knows are relevant, but which it tends to face with reluctance and extreme discomfort. Mostly we expect children to work these things out for themselves, in their spare time, with the guidance of their friends and family.

How do muslim parents deal with these issues? Are they really in a position to teach their children about values and identity, and personal and social morality in a muslim context? Can it really be expected? They want their children to learn physics and chemistry, but no-one would expect them to be able to do it themselves, with virtually no help from the professional education system.

So they find someone who has spent some time studying Islam to teach their children in mosque schools. But these teachers by nature of their studies, and the predilections of the parents their employers, tend to have come from another country, and are not always particularly well equipped to translate their religious ideas and ideals to the local society of the children they are teaching.

(For example, a local mosque tried hard to find an imam and madrassah teacher in Britain, but eventually employed a man born and raised in Pakistan, where he took his first degree. For his second degree he lived and studied in Saudi Arabia, someone suggested him for the job, and on his academic record he got it. He flew into Glasgow, speaking virtually no English, to teach in a mosque with half a dozen pubs within 200 yards, local girls, drunk and half-naked lurching singing past the door on their way to the local nightclubs - culture shock just wasn't in it, when he wasn't floundering he was paralysed - and to the children he was teaching he might as well have arrived in their midst from another planet, the man who fell to earth, hardly the ideal person to make their religious identity seem relevant in their familiar surroundings!)

Of course, many people suggest that to help the children, what they need is more education about Christianity - to help them understand what's going on at Christmas and Easter, and the programmes on television on Sunday. But I think that rather misses the point. They can grasp that as well as most other local kids. What they need is some help in understanding their parental culture in a way that enables them to form an identity that can bridge between their parents, their parental community, and the local cultural surroundings in which they will live their lives.

The situation faced by the children of members of any faith community in a secular school system has a clear correspondence to that faced by minorities in society. But the difficulties facing a child from a minority cultural and religious background are awesome, as can be seen in the identity crisis amongst young muslims, for example, with their phenomenally high rates of psychological breakdown. As it is such a critical issue, I will examine it more closely, with much of this next section drawn from Cajendra, Verma & Bagley's "Self Concept, Achievement and Multicultural Education.

"Erikson indicates that identity development has two complementing facts: (1) a developmental stage in the life of the individual, (2) a period in history (i.e. of the wider culture). There is thus a complementarity of what he calls 'history' and 'life-history'"

He describes the development of a psychosocial identity during adolescence as follows "It is clear, then, that many important components of one's identity tend to be resolved around this time. If one is not able, because of societal or personal reasons, to resolve these in a positive way, then `identity confusion' may result. This is uncertainty about the role one is playing in the scheme of life. The resolution of this turning point or `identity crisis' may be conscious and deliberate .... On the other hand, much of the resolution of this crisis involves emotional issues that may be relatively hidden beneath the surface of conscious awareness. ... For some black adolescents ...  because of the structure of society and the pressures of the dominant culture, they are denied the necessities with which to build an adequate 'life-history' to combat their surrounding milieu."

"Hauser found that a second environmental constraint was in terms of 'heroes' i.e. positive figures whom the black subjects were interested in emulating. .... Erikson argued that the individual belonging to an oppressed and exploited minority, and who is aware of the dominant cultural ideals but prevented from emulating them, is likely to fuse the negative images held up to him by the dominant majority with his own previously developed identity.

"Life in a multiracial society affects not only the attitudes and behaviour of minority group members toward the standard set by the dominant society, but also the responses to themselves and their groups. The way one looks upon himself is a product of his social experience with others. The nature of that experience profoundly influences the basic ego structure which is the central core of the self....

One's concept of the self is initially influenced by certain basic characteristics such as one's age, sex, colour, caste and in some cases, religion. These 'ascribed' characteristics impose upon the person's choice of others with whom he interacts and thus influence his answers to the questions: Who am I? What am I like as a person? Thus the answers to these questions come not in isolation from the society as a whole, but to a great extent in relation to the individual's position in the social structure.

"Cognitive identity is composed of both cultural identity .... and personal identity ...  the problem for ethnic group members is to have, within a global identity, an adequate balance of personal and cultural identity, combined with positive evaluation of those aspects of identity, in combination again with a degree of mastery over environment, and self actualisation."

Now that's all rather cold and academic, so let's see how this expresses itself more tangibly when a muslim child looks to society to establish his/her identity and self-perception. Clearly most have to deal with what one might call "normal" black/white racism on a personal and institutional level, a situation which is at least being given some official consideration. But when one looks in society's mirror for one's muslim identity it really is stranger than Alice through the looking glass. And it is not a Wonderland that the muslim sees, but a much more hostile and thoroughly unpleasant prospect. To a reasonably well-educated adult muslim, knowledgeable and secure in his/her religious identity, living as a muslim in the West can feel like being under siege, and when one looks for reflections of one's muslim identity what one sees are the bizarre distortions of a fairground hall of mirrors. What is a wonder is that any muslim children survive with any kind of Islamic identity at all.

In case this sounds like hyperbole, let me take you on a brief runthrough of some examples of the attitudes towards Islam that surround a muslim child here in Scotland. There is really no time to do justice to the overwhelming nature of its hostility, but perhaps a glimpse through different eyes will be enough to enable you to look at the world in a different way in the future for yourself.

Our historical view of Islam has been soaked in the mindset of the Crusades, and it is really no great compliment to say that things are slightly better than they were. In the 12th century, referring to Islam, Guibert de Nogent said "It is safe to speak evil of one whose malignity exceeds whatever ill can be spoken", and echoes of that attitude can still be heard today, the flame having passed through our academic, literary and artistic heritage. Dante, for example placed Muhammad in the pit of Hell, though he did think him slightly better than Judas.

With the Enlightenment, as fear of the Saracen, Moor and Turk declined, Islam was no longer invariably evil, but could also be seen as bizarre, distant, and often ridiculous, a primitive and deficient culture, which could even be seen as attractive in a frivolous and exotic sort of way, indeed even warranting a prurient fascination for its imagined sexuality and savagery that so titillated the libido. But Islam was always defined in terms of opposition to 'us', our good versus their evil, our orthodoxy their heresy, our moral probity their libertinism, our reason their emotional irrationality, our freedom their dogmatic tyranny, and our perfectibility versus their intrinsic deficiency. These qualities were seen as the justification for colonisation and enslavement, and as our conquering armies moved through the muslim world our orientalist scholars followed.

And why not? As our own dear Sir William Muir in his Life of Mahomet says; "there was nurtured by the Prophet in his own heart, a licentious self-indulgence, till in the end.... he justified himself by `revelations' from God in the most flagrant breaches of morality......he could take pleasure in cruel and perfidious assassination, could gloat over the massacre of an entire tribe, and savagely consign the innocent babe to the fires of hell". Clearly anything with that kind of sickness needs surgery. In fact, the British Empire was really an act of selfless generosity and compassion for the natives.

Fortunately, in acadaemia things are beginning to change, and the occasional muslim is now invited to give some input to University Islamic Studies courses. But that attitude rarely reaches down to school level yet. Schools are still filled with text books on Islam containing recipes for curry. Channel 4 can still put out a Schools programme on Islam with a presenter consistently saying 'Ramdam' for 'Ramadhan', and apparently no-one on the production team could tell the difference. And the Scottish Office Education Department could feel at ease writing the National Guidelines for Religious and Moral Education (including Islam within its World Religions remit), without a single muslim on the Review and Development Group, or even anyone with enough knowledge to prevent the most outrageous gaffe being thrown into the document at the last minute (equating the 5 pillars of Islam with the 10 Commandments - presumably the fact that they both begin with a number was enough).

But do attitudes in acadaemia really affect pupils? Presumably if their teachers had an academic training they do. And children may rarely read Dante, but their teachers might, and anyway Dante's literary heritage can be seen in the present day storytelling of film and TV, with villains who are simultaneously muslim, violent, sinister, crazed and terrifying, yet somehow hopelessly incompetent, being wiped out singlehandedly in vast numbers by Mr. Schwarzenegger, our hero in True Lies, or even Demi Moore our G.I. heroine. Look to the villains of any movie or TV series over the last couple of decades and the chances are you will find a muslim. We used to have the Russians, but now we are friends, and South American drug-barons are OK occasionally, but if you really need a stereotypical villain you know you can't go wrong choosing a muslim. And how many muslim heroes can you think of for young muslims to emulate? Even in the bit parts it's hard to think of any.

OK - never mind the fiction, let's look at the facts as portrayed in our news media.  Well, unfortunately, as Edward Said points out in 'Covering Islam', there seems to have been a strange revival of some old ways of thinking "ideas which have achieved a startling prominence at a time when racial or religious misrepresentations of every other cultural group are no longer circulated with such impunity. Malicious generalizations about Islam have become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign culture in the West; what is said about the Muslim mind, or character, or religion, or culture as a whole cannot now be said in mainstream discussion about Africans, Jews, other Orientals, or Asians."

This tracing doesn't do the original justice, with its brainless mullahs saying "Thru these lips speaks God", and "The Book is right - the sky is green" (that's the "How to Hook Book"). Would the printers have looked at it differently if it was black men with bones in their noses, or Orthodox Jews with flat hats and ringlets?

Or how about this from the Daily Mail (it's years old, but the refrain is so frequent and regular it could be yesterday) In fact it's about a minor armed flare-up in Osh - a remote village in Khirgizia, near Uzbekistan. Important national news? The problem with news is not calumny but detraction, not outright lies, but a snippet of remote and irrelevant truth which is portrayed as something normative.

And it is not just the tabloids where Islam is concerned. This is a theme that features regularly in Time and Newsweek, and our liberal broadsheets are just as guilty. As Said says, "... today's climate favours - one might even say requires - Islam to be a menace".

I had to stop taking the Observer, as I just couldn't bear to face the weekly Islamic exposes. What finally broke me was a huge spread on someone having their hands and feet hacked off with a blunt knife for some minor theft in an example of Islamic Justice in some remote African village. And there, of course, is the key. This example of brutal muslim justice is so normative that someone had to travel to a remote African village to find it. But if something is important enough to warrant a two page spread in the Observer does that not make it real and relevant to muslim children?

But then, who reads nowadays, people get their news from TV or 'bulletins' on the radio, and as someone with fairly strong 'media' connections this is a subject dear to my heart. The control and manipulation of language and presentation achieve what (at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist) must surely be a desired effect.

"Terrorism" is a word only applied to the acts of a few violent individuals, but for whom a whole population is held to be responsible. It does not apply to our side, however, whatever our actions. Indeed, there has been no justice for Lockerbie, but who remembers the fully laden Iran Air passenger jet blown out of the sky by a US Navy missile. No justice, no apology - in fact, I think the response might have been "Oops!". Well, the Iranians had been making belligerent noises, so clearly it was their fault.

Do we need a distraction from the political situation at home? Well, let's bomb Libya! Of course, we didn't get Colonel Gaddafi, but we got one of his kids - and the French Embassy, but c'est la vie - as anyone who survived might have said. I could go on and on, and this may all sound like a digression, but muslims live with this every day. When Brigitte Bardot says "Islamists have a mania for throat-cutting. I'm not making it up. You just have to look at the television" (Last Sunday's Independent - just after the story about forced arranged marriages), she was partially correct. But she is accused of provocation of hatred and racial discrimination, not the TV companies.

It never fails to surprise me how much people accept the language and agenda of journalists without thought - let alone challenge. When the Algerian elections were declared void a few years ago after the united muslim opposition gained 82% of the votes, my own son, a teacher, explained to me how the government action was necessary as the opposition wanted to "overthrow democracy". What democracy? Alice in Wonderland has nothing on that kind of logic, and it's still on the news nearly every day. "No one would want a muslim Government in Algeria" said John Simpson on last week's news - except perhaps the muslim population of Algeria.

Why is the label "Christian" never applied to South American dictators, or to drug runners like "Christian" General Noriega even when he was claiming sanctuary in the Vatican Consulate. Yet Saddam Hussein is almost invariably shown praying or kissing the Qur'an. At the risk of sounding paranoid, does no-one control this policy? In the Bosnian conflict there were three warring parties, two defined by religion, and one constantly and insistently stressing their multi-faith and multi-ethnicity. They were, of course, the Catholic Christian Bosnian Croats, the Orthodox Christian Bosnian Serbs, and the Multi-faith and Multi-ethnic Bosnian Muslims.

Of 150 talks on the BBC, the only time I have been seriously censored was when I questioned the Islamic nature of the butchery that takes place in the name of Saudi Arabian justice. Even so, when my neighbour said "You must admit the muslims really are a bloodthirsty bunch" she was conveniently forgetting the Somme and Paschendale, Dresden and Dachau. Prejudice is usually conveniently forgetful.

That is the way prejudice works. Facts are rarely allowed to disturb a prejudicial view. Prejudice is like science, it is theory-led, and events that don't fit the theory are usually discarded. So if muslim women are known to be downtrodden and suppressed, then Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan and Begum Zia in Bangladesh and the supporters that voted them into power must be "not-really-muslim". If muslim women have had independent wealth and property rights for fourteen centuries which western women were still fighting for in the 1920's, clearly what really matters is the right to take your clothes off for the Daily Sport.

"Curioser and curioser" said Alice.

Another curious aspect of prejudice is the way that opposing sides use the same terminology in reverse when referring to the other. Thus education departments call what goes on in schools education, as opposed to the inculcation of faith and personal spiritual development within a parental religious tradition, which is called instruction. Yet the First World Conference on Muslim Education said this of education, that "it helps in the complete growth of an individual personality, whereas instruction is training to do some mental or physical task efficiently. A man may be a fine doctor or lawyer, engineer or accountant, and still be ill-mannered, unjust, amoral, cruel, dissatisfied, unhappy, and obviously only partially educated."

It goes on "When we see an educated man what we recognise is his "goodness". A "good" man does not mean a "complete" man, as there is no end to human growth throughout a life, so an educated man is outward looking, modifying his understanding and behaviour as his life is enriched with knowledge and experience. This knowledge and experience, as well as the basic values and assumptions on which it is based, man learns from the society that surrounds him. He is an individual and part of a structured community, and both are necessary to the survival of each other, as unfettered individualism means anarchy and the breakdown of all systems, whereas excessive social control leads to stagnation, degeneration, and violent social upheaval.

Education preserves societal structures, conserving basic values and understandings, and transmitting them to the next generation, while at the same time looking to the reality of human needs and interests in all their variety, by nurturing personal growth, helping man to satisfy his yearning for a quality of life through the understanding of fundamental values. A quality of life which satisfies man's yearnings on many different levels. How you understand this quality of life, this aim of education, is basic to the way your education system works. 

What we have there is essentially Islamic, but it is a view which could have been voiced by many other faiths. As could the contents of a muslim curriculum - Understanding God and Creation, Divine Guidance and God's Relationship with Man, Life and Death and the Afterlife - Consideration of Duties, like Charity and Self-Restraint, Communal Unity, Striving for Justice, Working for the Communal Good, and Giving and Recognising Love and Respect. Recognising Good Behaviour - Desirable Qualities and Hateful Vices, Right and Wrong Action, and the ideal Way of Life. And then we need all the other subjects - not excluding the history of muslim contributions to knowledge that are all but ignored at present.

 As a farewell present I'll show you one of my favourite unheard of gems - a map by the muslim cartographer Piri Ra'is made around about the time that Columbus was 'discovering' America. Now even though my crude tracing really doesn't do justice to the original, you can still see that if you head west from the coast of Africa there, you come upon the coast of South America (with the Amazon, Orinoco and other rivers mapped quite some way inland), then heading north just past the West Indies you can see Florida, and then you can keep going north past New York to reach Greenland. But it was only mapped, not invaded and colonised. How does that fit in with your understanding of history?

Education for life needs to be set in a faith context, a belief system which gives it purpose. Our National Curriculum Guidelines give tacit recognition to this, yet RE and PSD are allocated a total of about an hour per week. It is a matter of priorities - they are not mutually exclusive, but is it more important to understand morality or differential equations? I was great at differentials, but I can honestly say that I have never used them since I was eighteen.

We need to change, because it is not just muslim children who are going through a crisis of identity. Prejudice springs not from ease with one's own nature, but from fear and insecurity. I firmly believe that for the health of our society it is time to set our education system free of its secular straightjacket and transform it into something more communally inclusive. Such a change may be difficult, changes usually are, but I refuse to believe it to be impossible. It is time to find a way to make the cliche a reality - Education is not just for childhood but for life.