A school in Guernsey, an island with a few dozen Muslims out of roughly 62,000 residents, set some of its pupils the task of writing to their parents about their conversion to Islam.
Children aged 12 to 13 have been tasked by their Religious Studies teacher, Amber Stables, to write to their families describing their conversion to Islam.
Assistance with content given to the pupils suggests:
Include: How you’re feeling, how becoming a Muslim has changed your life, how much you love your family and hope they can accept your choice.
Focus: How would it make you feel having to tell your parents this?? How would/could they react?
In setting the homework assignment, Miss Stables did perhaps realise that discussing conversion to Islam may be seen by some as controversial. As such she added a careful disclaimer (all punctuation reproduced from the original):
**Please also note this is a piece of creative writing and completely fictional YOU ARE NOT ACTUALLY CONVERTING TO ISLAM. It is purely to test your knowledge of what we have learnt this year and how well you can argue objectively!!!!
Such a reaction would not come as a surprise to observers of schools throughout Europe in recent times. An emerging trend across European education systems has seen children not just being taught about Islam in religious education classes, but being encouraged to embrace and celebrate it.
Breitbart London has previously reported on other such initiatives. For example, last year we reported that a school fair had been cancelled on the French island of Corsica after parents reportedly threatened teachers who planned to have their pupils sing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ in Arabic.
One parent admitted that he believed singing in Arabic would be the beginning of the end, but said he “never threatened anyone.” He continued:
“We already have veiled women picking up their children from the school… and now they want to sing in Arabic? What will it be tomorrow – an entire poem in Arabic? And then what will it be ten years from now?”
More recently we highlighted the example of an school being investigated by the Austrian schools inspectorate after it set its pupils the task of learning the words to a traditional Christian hymn, but with the word ‘God’ replaced by ‘Allah’.