Author: Stewart Payne
Publication: The Daily Telegraph,
London
Date: September 15, 2001
A SCHOOL librarian who witnessed
Muslim pupils in their classroom celebrating the terrorist atrocities in
America said she believes that fundamentalists peddling an extreme form
of Islam are deliberately targeting Asian children in Britain.
The librarian said the 15-year-old
pupils cheered and chanted anti-American slogans when one of their classmates
walked into the room during registration, punching the air and shouting
about the attacks. "I was sickened," she said. "I thought, 'Dear God, how
can they behave like this?'." The librarian asked not to be named for fear
of reprisals against her and her Home Counties school, which has mainly
Muslim pupils and where there have been vicious assaults, threats and arson.
"I was with an Indian member of staff. Because she is a Hindu they despise
her as well.
"She said to me, 'I cannot bear
to watch this', and we closed the door, leaving them with their teacher
who said nothing. She has been told by the head teacher that it is better
not to interfere.
"So instead of the school being
able to take a moral lead and to use the attacks as a means of having a
discussion about values and rights and wrongs, we have to let it pass unremarked.
It is heart-breaking. I have decided to leave the school because I feel
absolutely powerless."
The librarian, who has worked at
the comprehensive school for two years, said: "About 95 per cent of the
560 pupils are of Muslin origin." Most originate from three villages in
the disputed Mirpur region of Kashmir on India's border with Pakistan.
Large numbers have settled in the school's catchment area.
"It is like a parallel universe.
They have created a Kashmiri ghetto, and the children are not allowed to
adopt any western values or customs.
"Some of the children are a real
worry. We have pupils who will come up to you and smile sweetly and say
something in Urdu. Later you discover that they have called you a bitch.
"But most of them are decent kids
and so are their families. Yet whereas Indian children are encouraged at
school, the Pakistanis are not.
"They watch only Pakistani programmes
on cable or satellite. Their mothers never learn to speak English. The
girls are treated as second class and all are sent home to marry their
first cousins in pre-arranged weddings. They receive no support in their
studies.
"If we interfere we are called racists.
Yet they hate Sikhs with a vengeance, they hate Hindus and Afro-Caribbeans,
and they don't much like us either. They will go Sikh-bashing at the weekend.
"When I have offered advice to a
Muslim girl who came to me and said, 'Please miss, I don't want to get
married', I am not supposed to offer her any help. I am not meant to say,
'You are in Britain. This is a free country. You don't have to do anything
against your will.' "
The librarian said that although
parents actively resisted any assimilation - packing children off to Kashmir
if they showed signs of becoming westernised - she did not believe that
the scenes she witnessed in the classroom were inspired in the home.
"Most are not sophisticated enough
for that. Other forces are at work, maybe through their Muslim youth leaders
and out on the streets. We recently had Islamic literature circulating
that was deeply offensive.
"Islam is being peddled to these
kids. They are told to hate the West, and America in particular. These
children are victims, growing up in a country they are forbidden to become
a part of and encouraged to despise the people they live amongst."
