Skip to main content

Further Comments on Darul Uloom and Channel 4

The Channel 4 documentary has now been broadcast. It and many of the press reports confuse the Darul Uloom in Birmingham and the Mosque in Keighley. Just in case there is any uncertainty I condemn the treatment of children in the Keighley Mosque and support the Police's action in making an arrest in Yorkshire. (For the avoidance of doubt: This was not happening in the Birmingham School - later edit see comments)

However, Yorkshire is not Birmingham. It is Darul Uloom that is in my constituency.

One problem with Channel 4's approach is that they did not allow the management at Darul Uloom the opportunity to see the programme and identify who was claimed to have said what. This also includes uncertainty about translation. The management want to take some time to look at the details of this and investigate things. It would have been far better had this happened before the broadcast to give a balanced report.
  1. The programme repeats on numerous occasions the statements of a sixth former criticising Hindus. This is the most misleading part of the programme. The individual concerned was expelled from the school in August 2010 well before the management knew they were being bugged.

  2. The programme also makes a number of other comments about the mosque. I can deal with some of them now, but others will have to wait until a detailed investigation.

  3. The erstwhile deputy head of the school did make comments against integration, but he resigned in a mutual decision with the school, six months prior to his speech regarding integration, due to conflicts between his views and the school's. Hence his comments should not be held against the school.

  4. There has been a tendency in Birmingham from time to time for people to have patterned short haircuts. There was some degree of banter with the comments regarding haircuts in assembly about this as it does not fit with the school's policy. However, this is not about encouraging people to hate those people who shave in any event.

  5. A visiting speaker did make a reference to a historical speaker's criticism of those men who don't have beards, but it should be noted that perhaps 2/3rds of the congregation shave.

The mosque school do try to discourage their students from getting involved in the local street gang culture. I think also that is something where the mosque school are trying to do the right thing.

To me the key point about all of this is that the managment have a policy of not tolerating hate speech. They have enforced this policy. They enforced the policy because they wanted to not because they were pressurised to do so by being filmed.

To sum it up Darul Uloom are working towards a united society and have acted to expel extremists even involving the police to ban one individual from the premises. For this they should be congratulated not criticised. On the other hand Channel 4 have given them a kicking. That I think is unfair.

Comments

Unknown said…
I see you have no criticism of the child abuse that is happening in your constituency? Is kicking and punching children in schools official Lib Dem policy?
John Hemming said…
I thought it was clear that there was no kicking or punching of children in Yardley.

However, I will make that clear in the OP.
brompcarlisle said…
Please can you get some sort of semblance of back bone? You pathetic apologist hippy!

Why do we have to suffer such a shower of weak-willed piss artists as our MPs. You can't even condemn extreme anti-social indoctrination of children, and come out with a whole load of apologia.

No doubt because the school and representative "community" in your constituency who engage in this indoctrination are a "minority". And thus you feel unable to criticise for fear of being "racist" or some other synonym for socially divisive.

You're so hamstrung by a fear of yourself that you can't criticise others' extremely divisive behaviour. Really, it's rather sad and weak as hell.

When our "leaders" consistently show themselves to be the most spineless "multicultural" wimps, through there never-ending lazy insistance that they can't be expected to say anything that might upset a "group" - no matter the socially divisive nature of their actions - it's not surprising that people start sending hate mail and so on.
5050noline said…
' uncertainty about translation.' John, you dont need to be an Arabic or Urdu speaker to understand the tone of speech whilst writing the 'other' off as inferior.
'The management want to take some time to look at the details of this and investigate things.' I should darn well hope so. If it had not been for the film would they be doing so? Please don't affect such naivete. You kmust know how dificult it is for Muslims to criticise each other, especially in front of an 'other'.

Whaty about all the stuff we did not see? That has been going on previously?

Stop making excuses for an establishment that needs a very sharp eye kept on it. And I would NOT give the job to Ofsted.
AlienPsyTing said…
So will you or the local police be pressing charges for assult by the 'teacher' on those poor kids? Or will that be upsetting the multicultural apple cart? If the same comments and behaviour were carried out in a Christian school all hell would have broken loose by now and you know it, so try to bear in mind that being an effective politician requires a backbone to take hard decision. You seem not to have one.
John Hemming said…
That's all relevant to Yorkshire.

Popular posts from this blog

Its the long genes that stop working

People who read my blog will be aware that I have for some time argued that most (if not all) diseases of aging are caused by cells not being able to produce enough of the right proteins. What happens is that certain genes stop functioning because of a metabolic imbalance. I was, however, mystified as to why it was always particular genes that stopped working. Recently, however, there have been three papers produced: Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance Age- or lifestyle-induced accumulation of genotoxicity is associated with a generalized shutdown of long gene transcription and Gene Size Matters: An Analysis of Gene Length in the Human Genome From these it is obvious to see that the genes that stop working are the longer ones. To me it is therefore obvious that if there is a shortage of nuclear Acetyl-CoA then it would mean that the probability of longer Genes being transcribed would be reduced to a greater extent than shorter ones.