Fri, Apr 16, 2004 page9

• Teacher brings Islam to schools to fight biases

  • By Felicity Heywood / THE GUARDIAN
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  Anjum Anwar almost blends in with the sea of red around her. She has come to the morning assembly at Garstang community primary school, near Preston in the northern English county of Lancashire, to talk about living life as a Muslim. Anwar, a further education teacher, happens to be wearing red, like the red sweater uniforms of the pupils.

  Her hijab and skin tone set her apart in this predominantly white school. "Have you met a Muslim before?" is Anwar's first question. A pupil says yes, they have met someone their father works with. "Where are Muslims from?" A child puts up their hand and answers China.

  "Absolutely right," Anwar says. "There are Muslims in China, but Muslims live all over the world."

  I have accompanied Anwar for a bird's-eye view of the project she is taking around Lancashire schools. "Understanding Islam" is the brainwave of the team at the Lancashire Council of Mosques (LCM), an umbrella body funded by Lancashire County Council.

  This program has already exceeded expectations and its set targets. In so doing, it has attracted interest from neighboring Manchester, Blackburn and Blackpool Local Education Authorities, and made presentations to the UK's Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

  The project grew out of concern about increasing Islamophobia in the UK after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Wayne Marland, the leader of the equality team at Lancashire County Council, had already contacted schools to express concern about bad feeling against Muslims, urging them to "counter the excessive language being used in the media," when he was approached by the director of LCM.

  The council, already an LCM partner organization on other projects, provided ?30,000 (US$53,707) a year to cover costs and pay a project worker.

  "What is Islam -- is it something to eat?" ask the children at Garstang. "What color are Muslims?"

  The hands fly up. Someone says brown, another black and another white.

  "What about blue, green and yellow?" Anwar says.

  The children giggle.

  "So what makes me a Muslim?" she says.

  A boy says it is because she has brown skin.

  "So when you go to Barbados and get a suntan does that mean you are then a Muslim?" she asks.

  They all laugh again.

  With well-judged material and a clear sense of humor, the children warm to Anwar in the 15 minutes of assembly time.

  In that time she talks about what Muslims eat -- "everything" (she explains the prohibition against pork and some of the older children know that Jews don't eat it either); what football team she supports -- Manchester United (followed by equal cheers and boos from the children) and what her small son, also at primary school, enjoys playing.

  Chris Barlow, deputy head of Garstang, invited Anwar. He has responsibility for developing the health of the school's pupils, and that includes healthy minds, he says.

  "Anjum came over as just a normal person saying `This is what's going on in my life,' and the children liked it and responded to her. The kids may be exposed to negative images of Muslims in the press or through other means and they may call up the experience with Anjum that will help them form balanced opinions based on truth," he says.

  Garstang primary is a beacon school, but how has Anwar found more challenging schools?

  "I have been welcomed by parents, teachers and children alike wherever I have been, even in Burnley [where the far-right British National Party have recently won some seats on the local council]," she says.

  She admits she has had to deal with walking into schools where children have frozen because they had never seen an Asian before.

  She has been asked questions like: "Why are you not allowed to work?" and "Why are Muslim women not allowed to speak in front of their husbands?"

  It's not negativity, it's simply misinformation, she says.

  Which is exactly what Understanding Islam is trying to fix. Anwar says it is about celebrating the similarities and differences.

  "We need to learn about other people as human beings. And we can start to see that there are other communities who have a different faith and a different way of praying. The problems arise when a community feels their way is the only way," she says.

  Anwar has now visited 120 schools in the year and a half that the project has been running. As well as school sessions, she has also been involved in busing-in or "twinning" a predominantly white school with one that has mostly Muslim pupils -- with such good results it will be repeated.

  The problem is that there is only one of Anwar and 647 schools in the county of Lancashire to get through. The demand is ever-increasing. Marland says he "fully expects it to be funded up to March 2005." But Anwar has an even bigger picture in mind.

  "I suppose I am being idealistic, but I would like to see Islam or any other faith being taught as a civilization continuously throughout the curriculum," she says.

  Talking about the project with the DfES and Blair were brief sessions along with other grassroots workers, she says, and she doesn't expect much to come of it.

  But such ideas appear to be on the minds of the ethnic minority pupils team at the DfES. It recently awarded a contract to the Leicester City Council school development support agency to research existing materials and good practice in the curriculum in relation to Islam across England.

  When Anwar speaks, people listen. "Anjum challenges many stereotypes," Marland says. "She is a very powerful medium for change."
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