What is it that is troubling about portrayal of Muslims in British curriculum? Well a good start would have been if there was ANY portrayal of Muslims 😊 It’s almost as if Muslims don’t make up 2 Billion people around the World! As mentioned in our other pieces, our curriculum doesn’t prepare our kids adequately for adult life. The World is now more connected than ever. We can fly from one corner of the globe to the other in less than just 24 hours. Whether it’s Asia, Africa, Europe, Middle East or Americas, Muslims are natives in every corner of the World. They come from all races and regions. Yet in our curriculum, there is no mention of Muslims, their history, tenets of their religion or any piece from Muslim authors!

This poses a huge problem for majority of British children whose sole source of information about Muslims then becomes the local media. With very right wing Rupert Murdoch and his foundation in charge of some of the most important media sources in UK, this becomes particularly troublesome. The report by the Centre for Media Monitoring analysed more than 48,000 online articles and 5,500 broadcast clips from 34 media organisations that mentioned Islam and Muslims between 2018 and 2019. The study found that almost 60 per cent of articles portrayed Islam negatively and one in five associated the faith with terrorism or extremism. This is a huge perception problem and unfortunately, almost nothing is being done at a national level to counter this. Government is simply silent on this issue despite various reports of rampant Islamophobia in the Tory party.

What is need is urgent action to reform English Curriculum. We need to embrace our society’s beautiful diversity. We need to tell our children about the great Muslims authors out there. We need to educate our children’s minds on the dangers of toxic far right Nazi propaganda out there and how there are evil forces out there trying to divide out society along the lines of race and religion. We also need to teach our children to respect others beliefs, traditions and ways of life. Respect and love are the only two ways forward and we must make sure that our young minds are being trained, educated in a way that would prepare them to become happy, peaceful and loving citizens of UK and also lead the way in acceptances of these values across the World!