Thursday, April 20, 2006

British School Linked to Iran Teaches "to despise unbelievers as filth"


It seems as though there are no lengths to which Iran will not go lately, but this school is probably off of the list of targets of the "Martyrdom Brigade".

From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2142403_1,00.html (hat-tip www.thereligionofpeace.com)

MUSLIM students training to be imams at a British college with strong Iranian links have complained that they are being taught fundamentalist doctrines which describe nonMuslims as “filth”.

The Times has obtained extracts from medieval texts taught to the students in which unbelievers are likened to pigs and dogs. The texts are taught at the Hawza Ilmiyya of London, a religious school, which has a sister institution, the Islamic College for Advanced Studies (ICAS), which offers a degree validated by Middlesex University.

The students, who have asked to remain anonymous, study their religious courses alongside the university-backed BA in Islamic studies. They spend two days a week as religious students and three days on their university course.

The Hawza Ilmiyya and the ICAS are in the same building at Willesden High Road, northwest London — a former Church of England primary school — and share many of the same teaching staff.

They have a single fundraising arm, the Irshad Trust, one of the managing trustees of which is Abdolhossein Moezi, an Iranian cleric and a personal representative of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme religious leader.

Mr Moezi is also the director of the Islamic Centre of England in Maida Vale, a large mosque and community centre that is a registered charity. Its memorandum of association, lodged with the Charity Commission, says that: “At all times at least one of the trustees shall be a representative of the Supreme Spiritual Leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Both the Irshad Trust and the Islamic Centre of England Ltd (ICEL) were established in 1996. Mr Moezi’s predecessor as Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative, another cleric called Mohsen Araki, was a founding trustee of both charities.
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The tentacles are ever working their way into the West, despite all efforts by both Western and Muslim media to insist that it is the West who's efforts of stretching our ideals into the rest of the world, and destructively so according to the Left as well as most Muslims. The obvious point that we are not spreading our populations into Muslim countries and actively seeking to recruit and teach as well as act out on the desire to destroy Western nations is, as always, ignored by most.
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The text that has upset some students is the core work in their Introduction to Islamic Law class and was written by Muhaqqiq al-Hilli, a 13thcentury scholar. The Hawza Ilmiyya website states that “the module aims to familiarise the student with the basic rules of Islamic law as structured by al-Hilli”.

Besides likening unbelievers to filth, the al-Hilli text includes a chapter on jihad, setting down the conditions under which Muslims are supposed to fight Jews and Christians.

The text is one of a number of books that some students say they find “disturbing” and “very worrying”. Their spokesman told The Times: “They are being exposed to very literalist interpretations of the Koran. These are interpretations that would not be recognised by 80 or 90 per cent of Muslims, but they are being taught in this school.

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Interesting point that it is apparently the students themselves who are protesting this method of education, as well as their assertion that such a strong majority of Muslims would also disagree with the text. I am not familiar with the works of al-Hilli, but now may be the time to familiarize myself with this dangerous figure dredged up from history. The students, of course are speaking with The Times here anonymously. Interestingly, protesting something that up to 90% of Muslims would disagree with still requires anonymity.

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Dr Bahmanpour said: “We just read the text and translate for them, but as I said I do not deal with the book on purity. We have left that to the discretion of the teacher whether he wants to teach it or not.

“The idea is not to teach them jurisprudence because most of the fatwas of Muhaqiq are not actually conforming with the fatwa of our modern jurists. The idea is that they would be able to read classical texts and that is all.”

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I'll believe that statement when I am made the next Pope, when hell freezes over, or when Mahmoud Ahmadenijad becomes an anti-war activist. Take your pick.

Read the rest at Times Online

4 comments:

Jay.Mac said...

It's heartening that some of these students felt strongly about what they are being taught but the details on jihad, making war on Christians and Jews and even that unbelievers are unclean are all in the Koran too.

Any complaints about being taught that?

Jay.Mac said...

Sorry- forgot to include this link-

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/009.qmt.html

009.028
YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! Truly the Pagans are unclean; so let them not, after this year of theirs, approach the Sacred Mosque. And if ye fear poverty, soon will Allah enrich you, if He wills, out of His bounty, for Allah is All-knowing, All-wise.

Kiddo said...

The whole affair seemed strange to me. The Iran funding, the fact that the students were upset and that the Muslim community was upset. I don't know if the Muslim community is upset more over how this makes them look or truly upset, but I just found it odd that the insulted parties in this case were Muslim and that the perpetrators were their Muslim teachers. How often does that happen?

Oh, and Mustafa, yep I've read about some thoughts on najis. You can dig up some weird stuff on that subject online, boy howdy.

Kiddo said...

I agree, Olivia. Of course, every time that a politician has spoken at Bob Jones University they have been skewered by the press.