by
Les May
BIRCHFIELD
independent girls school in the Aston area of Birmingham is about to
mount a legal challenge against Ofsted. The school was rated
‘inadequate’ after the inspectors found a 1994 leaflet relating
to an Islamic conference in the library. According to the inspectors
the leaflet read ‘Today we find that the sons and daughters of
Islam are under continuous attack by the forces of non-Islam’.
It also promoted the khaleefah which the inspectors seemed to
believe is defined as ‘the total rulership of Muslims
over the world’.
This
definition is rather strange and does no correspond with my
understanding of its meaning, which I take to be leader of the
Caliphate.
Used in this way it seems to me
purely descriptive.
However
in the not too distant past a related word was used as the title of a
pernicious monthly magazine ‘Khilafah’
which itself seems to mean
‘Caliphate’. For a
couple of years around 2001-2002
I bought it regularly in a
local ‘asian’
supermarket in Rochdale
and I still have some copies.
I describe it as pernicious because of its content. What
has always puzzled me is why if
magazines like this were busy
promoting an alienation of
Muslims from institutions like democracy,
the attacks in September 2001 seemed to come as a surprise to
everyone. Hidden in plain
sight perhaps?
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