An opinion from England

Submitted by british muslim (United Kingdom), Aug 11, 2005 at 09:50

Why do people feel so threatened by Islam? I come from a town in England where schools only have a handful of Muslim students. As I was growing up all my friends were non-muslims. At school religious education focused on Christianity and Judaism, I feel alot of people were in the same boat as me. My parents nor I were concerned by the non-islamic cirriculum nor did we ever complain.

Every where we go, we muslims are forced to meet Christian teachings, many movies and books feature churches. They range from films like Stigmata, which focus on religion to films like Rocky which only have a passing mention. Hospital cabinets are always stocked with a bible, even with all this people complain that Islam is trying to spread its teachings when in comparison Christianity is way ahead. I haven't read any articles where Muslims are complaining about non-muslims spreading their teachings.

After all people can make their own choices about their faith, if non-muslim parents are worried about their children becoming "islamified" then they should have more trust in their faith to convince their children which is the right direction. Schools try to prepare children for adult life, if religious education avoids Islam in its cirriculum then these children will grow to be ignorant of Islam and from this you would get children who carry wrong ideas about Islam to their adult life and this may then become a reason for discrimination and prejudice.

Parents who want to shield their child from Islam, I ask you what exactly are you scared of? That your children will become Muslims? Terrorists? For the former, the parents should teach their own faith to their children at home. For the latter, terrorists are terrorists, not another word for muslims. And anyone who thinks otherwise are ignorant to the fundamentals of Islam and should be happy their children will not be as ignorant as them!

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