{"id":1246,"date":"2008-12-09T18:59:34","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T22:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=1246"},"modified":"2008-12-09T18:59:34","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T22:59:34","slug":"islam-the-religion-of-peace-and-child-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/islam-the-religion-of-peace-and-child-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Islam, the religion of peace; and child abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can anyone even begin to imagine the outcry if this happened at a Christian school?<\/p>\n

From the Times<\/a><\/p>\n

Muslim children are being beaten and abused regularly by teachers at some British \"Addmadrassas – Islamic evening classes – an investigation by The Times has found.<\/p>\n

Students have been slapped, punched and had their ears twisted, according to an unpublished report by an imam based on interviews with victims in the north of England. One was \u201cpicked up by one leg and spun around\u201d while another said a madrassa teacher was \u201ckicking in my head – like a football\u201d, says the report which was compiled by Irfan Chishti, a former government adviser on Islamic affairs.<\/p>\n

Almost 1,600 madrassas operate in Britain, teaching Arabic and the Koran on weekday evenings to about 200,000 children aged from four to their mid-teens.<\/p>\n

While there is no hard evidence to indicate how many are involved in the physical abuse of children, The Times has uncovered a disturbing pattern in one town – Rochdale – through interviews with mainstream school teachers, Muslim parents and the children themselves.
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One woman told The Times that her niece Hiba, 7, was slapped across the face so hard by her madrassa teacher that her ear was cut. It later became inflamed and she had to have emergency medical treatment.<\/p>\n

When the teacher refused to apologise, Hiba’s aunt, Jamila, insisted that her niece should be moved to another madrassa. \u201cI have absolutely no respect for religious teachers who behave like this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Another girl described how, at the age of 12, she was hit by her madrassa teacher whenever she mispronounced a word or forgot a verse of the Koran.<\/p>\n

When Imam Chishti, a religious education teacher who also runs the Light of Islam Academy in Rochdale, decided to carry out his own investigation into the problem he was shocked by how even the victims had grown to accept the abuse. \u201cThey all joked about it,\u201d he said. \u201cThere’s a culture that accepts it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imam Chishti said that part of the problem was that some madrassa teachers were ignorant of British law. Corporal punishment was banned in state schools in 1986 and in all schools in 1998. Under current law teachers acting in loco parentis may use only \u201creasonable punishment\u201d such as a smack, providing it does not cause any marks or bruising.<\/p>\n

But the abuse discovered by The Times investigation goes far beyond what could be termed \u201creasonable force\u201d. One particularly brutal form of punishment practised in some madrassas is known as the Hen, in which the victim is forced to hold his ears while squatting with his arms fed through his legs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can anyone even begin to imagine the outcry if this happened at a Christian school? From the Times Muslim children are being beaten and abused regularly by teachers at some British madrassas – Islamic evening classes – an investigation by … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[189],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}