Muslim children are being withdrawn from music lessons because some families believe learning an instrument is anti-Islamic, it has emerged.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 Dr Diana Harris, a lecturer at the Open University, said she had visited schools where half of pupils were withdrawn from music during Ramadan.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 in British schools 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school, 20 pupils were removed from rehearsals for a Christmas musical and one five-year-old girl has been permanently withdrawn from all classes.
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 There’s been about 18 or 22 children withdrawn from certain sessions, out of music class, but at the moment I just have one child who is withdrawn continually from the music curriculum,” she said.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”, said: “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. I think they were adhering to very strict lines about what was acceptable.”
11 comments:
I don't really understand cultures and religions that don't allow music to be listened to or played.
It's a pity those believers who lead miserable lives devoid of these distractions from their faith will never know how pointless it all was and how they threw their only life away.
Next thing you know the blind will be texting while driving with braille I-phones. Ooops wrong window. Muslims need to stay away from Mozarts grave and quit spitting betel juice on it.
What can you say about people who choose to remain ignorant followers of a creepy fairy tale? I do not understand why they move to western countries and act like they still live in whatever repressive hell hole they ran from in the first place. If you don't like the modern world, just don't move there, and don't try to take us bake to the dark ages.
*sigh*, its good to see people haven't resorted to abuse and bigotry.
Doesn't music have beneficial effects on the brain, whether you're listening to it or playing it?
It's too bad these people are missing out.
What a joyless, repressed, hate filled life these people have.
I agree - and given the chance, it's a world their clerics want us all to lead.
I will never understand a) why these Muslims move to the west, or b) why the west kowtows to their medieval superstitions.
"*sigh*" sarcasm is rubbish.
To answer your point a: because in the west they can enjoy their joyless, repressive lives with all the modern conveniences and with less chance of someone else trying to violently impose their heretical version of the joyless repressive lifestyle on them.
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