Posted on 06/23/2005 1:07:16 AM PDT by CarrotAndStick
MUMBAI: If A can be for Arjun and B for Brahma, A can also be for Allah and B for Bismillah. The Islamic English alphabet and Islamic nursery rhymes have been around for five years in Mumbai.
‘Three little girls, see how they pray’ and ‘I love Allah, oh do you?’ are chanted to the tune of nursery rhymes in the four Islamic English schools in the city, all of them in the heart of the Muslim strongholds of south and central Mumbai.
The similarity to the RSS schools in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand doesn’t end with the revised alphabet lesson. Like the RSS, the founders of these Islamic English schools worry about children growing up unprotected against the onslaught of the Wicked West.
In fact, they wish Hindu school managements followed their example and started ‘Hindu English schools’ to impart the religious grounding they feel is essential to mould a child. Lack of such a foundation, they say, is what makes today’s kids so undisciplined.
Their raison d’etre is to foster their own religious and cultural values in children of their own faith. Businessman Suhail Shaikh’s AJF Islamic English School in Mazagaon at Mumbai was the first such school to begin in 2001.
Unhappy with his son having to recite Christian prayers, he didn’t want him to bow in front of the image of Saraswati every morning either.
What he, and the founders of the other Islamic English schools in Mumbai wanted for their children, was an impossibility in Mumbai at that time: education on par with that provided by the best Englishmedium schools, without the “unIslamic’’ and often anti-Islamic ambience that came with it.
UnIslamic as in no permission for mehndi/ salwars for teenage girls, and an easy familiarity with boys; anti-Islamic as in taunts about Pakistan and terrorists, and barely concealed contempt for ‘typically miyabhai’ parents. So they decided to provide such an education themselves.
Shaikh started his school in his office, with his son as the only student and his Christian secretary as the teacher. Today, the school has 236 students from nursery to Std IX, and charges Rs 3 lakh annually for the secondary section (including an “Islamic meal’’ of fruit and eggs, and imported text books and CDROMs).
Some parents have withdrawn children from established schools even if it has meant losing a year (or more) and risking their future; while others are willing to bring their kids all the way from Mahim, pay the high fees and meet the stringent conditions laid down for parents, which vary from getting rid of their TV sets (Suhail Shaikh’s school), to learning English, doing namaz five times a day, wearing the hijaab, cutting off their cable connection and attending regular parent-training meets (Zakir Naik’s school).
Stressed out Mumbai parents feel this is a small price to pay to ensure your child grows up right—and English-speaking—in today’s hedonistic world.
Unlike many Muslim parents, these parents are saved the bother of having to force their kids to learn the Quran in addition to doing their regular homework.
The Quran is not just taught as a subject as it is in most Muslim run schools. Here, Arabic is the second language; so toddlers learn not just to recite prayers, but understand them.
These parents look on proudly as their toddlers leave home (after reciting the ‘dua’ meant to be recited when stepping out) covered from top to toe (“best to get them used to the hijaab from childhood’’), secure in the knowledge that they will imbibe the Islamic values of obedience and modesty (conspicuous by its absence in today’s kids, they complain).
Most important, for both the school founders and the parents is the fact that they will spend their days in the knowledge that “Allah is watching’’.
But other parents (mostly professionals) have tried these schools and turned away, unwilling to deprive their children of the joys of TV; too busy to supplement this special education with visits to bookshops where their kids can read what other schoolchildren normally read; and seriously worried about the latter ending up misfits in a multi-cultural society.
To charges of further isolating an already ghettoised community, these schools talk about “inter-school programmes’’ where their kids can meet others.
Sounds unreal, but last year, this did happen: Suhail Shaikh’s boys went to Pune to tie rakhis to Hindu girls at the invitation of a ‘Hindu’ school in Pune.
Dr Shehnaz Shaikh, founder of Al Mu’minah Girls High School at Agripada, herself a product of prestigious convents in north India where she was asked more than once to “go back to Pakistan’’, and anguished witness of similar taunts to her daughter in one of Mumbai’s best-known schools, asks bitterly: “We mingled with the mainstream, and what did we get?
Rejection and humiliation. There’s a whole lifetime to live with others. Let our kids grow to be good, confident Muslims first, only then will they be able to integrate well.’’
©Bennett, Coleman and Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.
When will the world ever learn to stand up against the menace to liberty that Islam really is?
When it's too late.
And that day is getting ever closer.
See Mohammed Run.
Let our kids grow to be good, confident Muslims first, only then will they be able to integrate well.’’
Integrate? Not possible after that indoctrination.
A MUST READ: The Life and Religion of Mohammed the Profit of Aribia by Rev JL Menezes, can be purchased through Human Events news paper book store. Read this and you will know more than 98% of non muslims.
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