To think that the mother/daughter duo who took Michaela to court should face some natural consequences?

[KTheGrey]

Apparently the mother involved wants to send her younger child to the school she finds so unsatisfactory in September. I don't think this is reasonable. I understand the logic of leaving a child at a school where they are established, but she should be expected to find a school she likes better for a younger sibling, surely.

She also intends to bring another suit, presumably tax payer funded again. I think that she should be expected to pay in full for any further suit she brings against the school. She could apply for costs if she wins.

@Xenia

I think it is the idea of schools becoming faith schools by default because of local demographics that has to be a concern

There must be pressure on schools to adjust their ethos if there is a significant Muslim cohort and I think Michaela is an example where has to resistance and an assertion of secularity if that is the schools' perspective.

@toomanyy

Isn't that shutting down a conversation.

I think we should be able to be critical of any religion and that is fundamental to free speech in the UK.

There are many that criticise Christianity but it's influence on modern life is much less than previous generations

Anyway the opinion of a religion was of little importance at the school in question and maybe that is why we have law?

Actually it is to misunderstand what is in the law as it stands.

To say "Muslims don't owe me anything" is wrong. If they are UK citizens then they do. They are bound by English law as am I. That is not some sort negotiable element as the case appeared to suggest.

Very religious people want to claim social negotiation all the time. The law makes it clear they can't expect this. I would like schools to be explicitly secular actually, and think it would be a good outcome for the UK.

@bombastix

The law is the law. Also law is passed by parliament in our democracy. The legal system indirectly administers the will of the people.

I owe my country a lot. Many have sacrificed much for it.

Yes.

I don't know if anyone remembers the Festival of Light. They too were godly negotiators with government and institutions. They failed. These little social negotiations should also be rebuffed in the same terms. The law is equal: let's keep it that way.

I think the law is going to be tested in future unfortunately with maybe requests schools separate boys and girls.

I find some arguments about gender segregation and not through personal choice similar to separate but equal in historical rulings within the US.

Through long hard battles through the centuries Britain has moved away from patriarchal systems and we need to continue that struggle.

I think free will is at the heart of this and I am yet to be assured people practise religions purely out of choice and Islam does not seem a religion which offers faith/non faith choice to it's young people. I think a test of the strength of faith is its observance without coercion.

The oxymoron of Islamic feminism I think can be jarring and I suspect many (not all) young Muslim women are subjecting themselves to restriction in order to avoid ostracism and abuse.

Figures on Muslim apostates are hard to gather but it is significant. The removal of faith though has social damage akin to leaving a cult so we have to be minded how difficult it is for people of devout parentage to explore atheism and liberal values. I would fear any teacher supporting critical examination of faith may be hounded out of a job.

Tolerance does not mean acceptance either. We tolerate other people's religion but that does not mean we accept the ideology or a way of life associated with it I suppose this is another argument for secularisation of schools in that the school is not beholden to any one groups religious viewpoints

This is also about respect which is fundamental to a working society. We respect people being able to practise a faith in private so people should respect a school's decision to have secular values. A court has ruled on the validity of not offering prayer time so we have to respect the rule of law.

Maybe it comes as a surprise to some who immigrate that their host culture is different but it shouldn't. I think this is why explaining British values e.g. democracy is important e.g. the law overides and religious law that exists independent of it

Well it can't unless the Royal Family go, since King is the of the CoE.

That is not a problem for me! Make him king of all the sky pixies or none.

That is the interesting point. When I become - the other - the different thing here in the part of the UK where I live there are more people who are nothing like me than there are those like me (which is true where I live which is not too far from the Michaela school) - the issue (or if you believe Islam is the true faith the wonderful thing) that the German school might be 80% muslim or Michaela school is 50% muslim. I could of course like many people like I am go with a white flight to white areas of the UK or London but I stay and most of us all live in harmony most of the time.

The Uk has chosen to import a lot of people whose values are similar to those women fought against in the 1800s and early 1900s and won. I remember one of my sons, the only white boy in his class, telling me about one lunch when he was the only boy on the table who was not sexist and not homophobic and I joked that I was paying school fees so he could inculcated in the values of rural Pakistan. Mind you plenty of groups of white teenage boys are often very sexist and homophobic.

it is not surprising that newcomers want to live with others who are like they are and has happened with waves of new entrants to the UK including those of my ancestors who were Irish and moved to the UK about 1838 to work in coal mines who originally tended to congregate with others who were like them, ld to booming Catholic churches etc but then gradually married English protestants and now you couldn't tell who is who as they completely mingled in.

@LambertndButler if your god is so great he she or it will survive mockery on a website. I'm no fan of Kings or religion

Interestingly if we are mentioning the King then we have to reflect the monarchy features quite heavily in the history national curriculum. The history national curriculum covers predominantly UK history i,t's Christian monarchy and tumultuous events such as ww1 and ww2.

Why concentrate on a Christian Britain? Simply because it's our history as a nation and its incredibly important. We cannot start changing local curriculum to study the early history of Saudi Arabia for example and no one is suggesting we do apart from those that feel their religious and geographical heritage is such that they feel our history is relatively unimportant.

Similarly our English curriculum concentrated on English historical writers and it is an established curriculum again focusing on some of our greatest authors.

We have a curriculum designed to be Britain centric and by necessity there is going to be bias towards one religion.

One thing that has been suggested to me is that Muslim pupils disengage from the curriculum in some subjects and this impedes learning. However we have to retain the curriculum as is.

@Xenia

I have noticed people in our town moving so that their children do attend predominantly white schools. I think this is partially about school quality but also an acknowledgment of tension between religions and ethnicities that can impede learning.

I think integration is key and you can only have a diverse and inclusive society of you see it i.e. you see a class and see a diverse pupil cohort. However as mentioned before there is resistance to true social mixing because of different world views. People will do a lot to ensure their children are brought up in environments that reflect their religion and ethos. Where this can't happen in my opinion you can get real tension of not managed correctly.

sexism and homophobia should be unacceptable in schools but to what extent are teachers fearful of attacking such things because they may be accused of religious discrimination or not paying due regard to religious sensitivities.

@bombastix

still awaiting an Islamic equivalent of Life of Brian. The reason for a film like this never being produced is that in general we have over decades developed a culture where elements of religion can be mocked (e.g. Father Ted). We don't want to go backwards.

OK I am all in with Charles being King of All The Sky Pixies.

And there we have it.....We live in a country of free speech where we can refer to sky pixies without a care. Freedom to criticise religion is a previous one.

@mids2019 I agree with a lot of what you say. Basically I remember my parents liberating themselves from the very strict morality of Christianity when they were young, the fight not to be considered sinful, or be condemned mostly by older people who derived power from religion. The campaign for moral rearmament and the Festival of Light. Malcolm Muggeridge on the Life of Brian and the idea of blasphemy.

We have really only just dispensed with the idea that the Christian church is the moral guide in the UK. Philip Larkin writes about it well in High Windows.

Religion is man made. There is something great in simply being able to say that, and be a person and be educated without religious interference. Let people have opinions not silenced by sanctioned beliefs.

Eh??

Off the top of my head:

• Shazia Mirza (my favourite female comedian)

• Tulip Siddiq - MP for Hampstead and campaigner for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

• Young Aspana Begum - courageous MP for Poplar (and hijab wearing)

• Even younger Zarah Sultana

• Rushanara Ali, Bethnal Green

• Then there's Shabana Mahmood who won 80% of the vote in the last couple of elections.

All (female) Labour MPs.

• Then there's the female Labour MP - I forget her name- who is a doctor and still works some A&E shifts. She was quite prominent during Covid.

There are others - including at local council level - but I can't be bothered to look them up.

The issue of which history should be studied in various countries' schools is always interesting. A lot of religious parents will send children to weekend classes too eg Catholics even if not at Catholic school might go to Sunday school and Holy Communion classes. I remember sayig to my child whose degree is ancient history why it is Greeks and Romans. Why isn't it Neolithic peoples or Neanderthals (I have 3% Neanderthal DNA) or Chinese.

Those choices are guided by cultural influence, so I suppose a kind of temporal proximity is the main driver. In the case of which languages are taught at school, I have always ascribed the offer of French, German and Spanish to geographical proximity.

@MyrtlethePurpleTurtle

You give examples of well educated women who in some examples it is not quite evident how conservative their faith is.

You do get Muslim MPs obviously and I wonder to what extent this is driven by their constituency demographics? Anyway being an MP means having to represent a whole range of people in a democratic state so I very much doubt they would decry the rule of law or being cultural biases into decision making.

I know of Sultana and she has been known to tweet anti semitic comments in the past and there are certainly some working class white constituents who don't fully think she represents their interests. I think her political career maybe stalled under Keir but knowing her constituency she is going to have a hell of a job being in a party or government that won't have manifesto commitment to stop arms supply to Israel. Locals would want this raised by her every time she speaks

I suppose you can make comedy out of Islam by lampooning or dark humour (one of your examples) but you have to ask is thus lampooning a distraction from having a serious look at culture? It may be edgy humour but put her jokes in the mouth of a non Muslim and you may get a different reaction to the comedy. It's a bit Muslims are the only ones to make humour out of Islam isn't it?

@bombastix

I lived through maybe the end of the era if main stream observant Christianity in the UK and I think it would be an interesting academic exercise to see how a patriarchal religion declined e.g. expansion of popular music, alternative culture, feminism, contraception, legality of divorce and homosexuality etc. Modern liberties are partly a result of the decline of organised authoritarian religion which has direct social influence.

We don't wish to see a reversion to this culture I believe so we laid increasing secularisation in society generally or at least making religion a lot more personal.

One thing I think some Muslims fear to an existential degree is Islam going the same way as Christianity. Religion is ultimately passed through generations and through scripture. A child left to its own rational will not independently come to the conclusion that there is a divine entity in some alternate universe that will damn you for having a glass of beer with pork scratchings .

Therefore to protect faith there must be means to prevent children being influenced externally and we have plenty of examples of that through historic Christianity and definitely modern cults.
(Jehovah's witnesses do this through social control and the othering of 'worldly' people.)

We therefore get to the desire of many to have faith schools to protect from these influences but we are not as a society in a mood to extend faith schooling. We have only just managed to get some integrated schooling in Northern Island so the divisive effect is obvious.

So the courts are the only way to try and sustain religious ethos in school or impose it and if the courts say no . . .well a lot of unhappy religious people .

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasa

I have known calls for this type of education to be available in the UK which I doubt will ever happen. We have families sending their children to such schools abroad and it massively impacts their formal learning in the UK as you get to stage of knowing a lot of Islamic teaching but with no room for science, maths and the rest of the GCSE curriculum.

@mids2019 - my view is that they are directly connected. It was those social changes, followed by legal changes, delivered by Labour governments to support abortion, decriminalized homosexuality, equal pay, removal of figures like the Lord Chamberlain to censor the theatre, availability of contraception, the slow end of prosecutions of blasphemy or obscenity against people or books and films, meant an end to the kind of explicit moralism of Christianity. It was neutered. There are still evangelists who are extreme who protest about homosexuality, the wickedness of abortion and they always hated these changes away from Victorian morality that was consciously done away with. Some people still hanker for a world where everything is controlled to a book.

It has not been perfect since. But the freedoms are night and day for women. Children will not adopt religious ideas unless it is done at an early age. Children are naive. I could have educated mine to believe in almost anything at a young age, maybe Zeus or Thor? At one stage in history that may have been the socially acceptable thing to do, depending on where you lived.