Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Re: RE

RE at my school was a haphazard affair. My teacher - a bubble-permed Australian with yellow-tinted glasses, perhaps the campest man in the world, yet surprisingly married (albeit to a decrepit old bat about 40 years older than him) - liked to concentrate on Christianity above all else. Which is fair enough, I suppose, given that you could only go to Christian schools round my way - you had the option of Proddy or RC, but that was about it; one way or another, you'd be schooled in the Great British religion before your time was up.

Looking back, learning about Jesus was quite instructive and there certainly wasn't much negative about it. We skipped over the more gory and difficult-to-justify fire-n-brimstone bits of the Bible in favour of the New Testament, all the more palatable stuff about loving your enemy, turning the other cheek, the good Samaritan, doing unto others and so forth. And that's perfectly fine - but it did leave me with a bit of a gulf of knowledge when I found myself in the adult world, living as I did in West London near Southall, with a bustling population of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus nearby. What were the differences in culture? I couldn't have told you. It might have helped to have known.

I think it helps to learn about other cultures, particularly when there are more and more people of different backgrounds and faiths in this country. I think it helps with understanding and trying to work out where others are coming from; it gives you a broader, more catholic (with a small C) perspective on the world - certainly, it would be very instructive for kids, whether their parents care about that kind of thing or not, just to be exposed to other cultures and to know why some classmates go to temple, some don't eat ham sandwiches, some fast in winter and so on. That can't hurt - can it?

Ah. Yes. I see. The discussion by the National Union of Teachers to expose kids to more religious voices in class was always going to make the hate-filled spunkwits at the Express burst a few veins in their necks, wasn't it? What a shame that they hadn't been schooled in multi-faith RE; they might understand a little more about Islam than they appear to have been, given the reams of anti-Muslim bullshit littering their pages day after day. I wonder if Richard Desmond had members of the Muslim faith coming into his school to tell him all about their religion? I'm guessing not, somehow, but you never know, do you.

So here comes the tsunami of shite, anyway:

FURY OVER PLAN TO TEACH KORAN IN SCHOOLS

...as well as the Bible, the Torah, and other religious texts. But that doesn't matter when you only see one Abrahamic religion as being a problem, does it?

STATE schools should be forced to open their doors to Islamic preachers teaching the Koran, the largest classroom union demanded yesterday.

'Forced' - these militant nutters in the NUT, they're just trying to make us all face east and pray, aren't they? We'll be in Londonistan before you know it...

The National Union of Teachers’ conference also said existing religious schools – almost all of them Christian – should have to admit pupils from other faiths.

What would be wrong with that? What is so good about having a caucus, a closed shop, a ghetto? Is that a good thing?

The union’s general secretary Steve Sinnott said that allowing Muslim imams to preach in schools would be a way to reunite divided communities.

Quick! Ring up some Tory cunt to claim that all Muslims are rabid jihadists!

But the proposals prompted immediate outrage. Conservative Party backbencher Mark Pritchard said: “This is just further appeasement for Muslim militants.

“We should just follow the existing laws on religious education, which state that it should be of a predominantly Christian character. All this will do is further divide many communities that are already split on religious lines.”

How and why will it further divide communities? How? Explain yourself, man!

Speaking as delegates met at the hard-Left-dominated union’s annual conference, Mr Sinnott admitted that his plan would amount to religious indoctrination inside taxpayer-backed schools rather than simple teaching of what different religions believe.

He said: “This is more than simple religious education, it’s religious instruction.”

'Hard left'. Yes, trade unions = hard left = Muslim appeasement = they're coming to bomb us! This is written by the so-called 'political correspondent' Gabriel Milland. Mind you, political correspondent at the Express is a bit of a redundant title anyway. Slag off lefties, slag off Muslims: there, job done.

The Church of England also denounced the proposals. A spokesman said: “It is for religions to teach their faith to people, it is for schools to teach about religion.”

Yes. And that's exactly what this proposal does, you doughnut.

The Church was even joined by its long-time foe, the National Secular Society. A spokesman said: “If it is allowed, it will be the zealots imposing their will on everyone else.”

And that's world-class out-of-context misquoting there to create a two-pronged attack on the NUT.

Of course this does little more than set the hares running for the usual anti-Muslim fuckstick commenters, who let loose with some bog-standard tirades against the heathens. Depressingly familiar, depressingly dull - yes, it's the Express's anti-Muslim agenda exposed to the core. And what a dirty, nasty, vile thing it is to see.

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