SubscribeCivics Class Asks: What Would Muhammad Do?
From those defenders of the faith at the New York Times:
Idris Watts, teaching at a mosque in Bradford, applies the words of the Koran to questions of daily life and citizenship in Britain.
British Civics Class Asks, What Would Muhammad Do?
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: August 21, 2007
BRADFORD, England — At the Jamia Mosque on Victor Street in this racially and religiously tense town, Idris Watts, a teacher and convert to Islam, tackled a seemingly mundane subject with a dozen teenage boys: why it is better to have a job than to be unemployed.
“The prophet said you should learn a trade,” Mr. Watts told the students arrayed in a semicircle before him. “What do you think he means by that?”
“If you get a trade it’s good because then you can pass it on,” said Safraan Mahmood, 15.
“You feel better when you’re standing on your own feet,” offered Ossama Hussain, 14.
The back and forth represented something new in Britain’s mosques: a government-financed effort to teach basic citizenship issues in a special curriculum intended to reach students who might be vulnerable to Islamic extremism.
In the long haul, the British government hopes that such civics classes, which use the Koran to answer questions about daily life, will replace the often tedious and sometimes hard-core religious lessons taught in many mosques across the land. Often, these lessons emphasize rote learning of the Koran and are taught by imams who were born in Pakistan and speak little English and have little contact with British society.
Written by a Bradford teacher, Sajid Hussain, 34, who holds a degree from Oxford, the new curriculum is being taught in some religious classes here in a city that is increasingly segregated between South Asians and whites.
The pilot effort in Bradford has the backing and the financing from the Labor government as part of a hearts-and-minds campaign that it hopes will eventually spread to other cities and help better integrate the country’s mainstream Muslims into British culture…
An estimated 100,000 school-age Muslim children attend religious classes held at mosques in Britain daily, generally after regular school hours, said Jane Houghton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Communities and Local Government. “The impact this teaching could have is quite considerable,” she said.
But as much as the government likes the curriculum, it has faced opposition from some Muslims.
Why, asked Nuzhat Ali, the women’s coordinator of the Islamic Society of Britain in Bradford, should Muslim children be singled out for civics lessons? …
Why indeed?
Of course the real problem lies in the truthful answer to the question, “what would Muhammad do?”
For Muhammad would do what he always did: he would kill anyone who did not do things the way he wanted them to be done.
And that is what too many of his followers do, too. Which is why they are such a scourge everywhere in the world to this day.
So it is difficult to see how these “civics classes” are going to change that, since it is the core of the Islamic creed.
But at least the British government recognizes that they have a problem.
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9 Responses to “Civics Class Asks: What Would Muhammad Do?”
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August 21st, 2007 at 1:49 pm
“For Muhammad would do what he always did: he would kill anyone who did not do things the way he wanted them to be done.
And that is what too many of his followers do, too. Which is why they are such a scourge everywhere in the world to this day.”
Good one! How true, how true! What does it matter what the curriculum is? At the end of the day, Islam’s murderous adherents will still be murderous. It’s what they’re taught, and what they’ll keep on doing!
Apart from the Aztecs, has there ever been a more murderous, blood-thirsty religion?
August 21st, 2007 at 2:23 pm
I could see where some Muslims might rightfully be angry about this. Not so much for being “singled out” but for state funded watering down of their religion. I prefer them to ban any teaching of Christianity in states school here then to offer “programs” that indoctrinate in the form of Christianity but deny the power thereof.
August 21st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
“What would Mohammed do?” Rape, kill, rob, plunder, molest little girls and say it’s “Allah’s will,” enslave, and just generally do evil.
August 21st, 2007 at 4:13 pm
WWMD? Interesting bumper sticker, eh?
August 21st, 2007 at 4:39 pm
muslim children should be singled out for “CIVILITY” lessons over any other. Teach them to become actual human beings instead of rabid murdering psychopaths and I bet the rest of the world wouldn’t treat them with more fear and forboding than an outbreak of Ebola virus in a major city.
Stop the rhetorical nonsense, and start teaching the little brats how to live, instead of how to die. Islam is chock full of ways to die, reasons to die, the very need to die, and all the while murdering as many infidels as possible as you finally achieve that oh so sought after martyrdom that the clerics keep pounding into those impressionable skulls.
The main reason that the children of Islam are kept ignorant and isolated by their elders is because of the very real fact that once shown how the rest of the world lives and treats others, Islam looks like a very poor choice indeed.
Bin Akmaadi, you’ve just won the mathematics competition here at Eastwicke school for gifted Children….what are you going to do now??
“well, first of all, I am going to kill my teacher, that infidel pig. Then, I am going to strap on the vest of explosives my mother made for me, and have my father drive me to a cafe full of Jewish kids having pizza after school, and blow them and myself up. Allah akbar!
Those lunatics….
August 21st, 2007 at 6:02 pm
What would Mohammad do??? Find a bunch of innocent infidels and blow them up along with yourself.
August 21st, 2007 at 9:39 pm
From WMD’s to WWMD’s, What a strange place we have arrived.
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:17 am
Ahhh, a religious message the liberals can finally tolerate. Don’t like that WWJD thing, but WWMD, that’ll make a liberals heart bleed (in more ways than one).
Kind of appropriate that WWMD and WMD are sooooo similar.
August 22nd, 2007 at 11:23 am
I’d hope any civics or civility class would teach that the correct response to any perceived “offense” to one’s beliefs or religion should NOT include murderous rage.
Of course, that’s too much to hope for where the Religion of Peace ™ is concerned.