“Some Muslims believe that playing musical instruments and singing is forbidden according to Islam.”
And where would they have gotten that idea? What kind of repressed killjoy would spread that sort of thinking around?
Why, Muhammad: “The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance” (Hadith Qudsi 19:5).
As the hadith indicates, the ban on music, as distasteful as it is by itself, is part of a much broader agenda, and thus a symptom of a much broader problem regarding the widespread unwillingness of Muslim immigrants in Europe to assimilate as equals in society, rather than as a privileged class whose every whim and hangup must be accommodated — or else.
And as is the case with the general issue of Islamic supremacism (as well as jihad doctrine), few will want to acknowledge that this display of hostility toward music education has anything to do with Islam. “Muslim pupils taken out of music lessons ‘because Islam forbids playing an instrument’,” by Laura Clark for the Daily Mail, July 1 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Muslim pupils are being withdrawn from music lessons because some families believe learning an instrument is anti-Islamic, it emerged today.
An investigation has discovered that Muslim pupils are being taken out of school music classes even though the subject is a compulsory part of the national curriculum.
While parents have legal rights to withdraw children from religious and sex education classes, no automatic right exists to pull them out of subjects such as music.
One education expert said that up to half of Muslim pupils were withdrawn from music lessons during Ramadan.
And The Muslim Council of Britain said music lessons were likely to be unacceptable to around 10 per cent of the Muslim population in Britain.
However, in certain branches of Islam – such as Sufism, which is dominant in Pakistan and India – devotional music and singing is actually central to the religion.
A BBC investigation found that in one London primary school, 20 pupils were removed from rehearsals for a Christmas musical and one five-year-old girl remains permanently withdrawn from mainstream music classes.
Some Muslims believe that playing musical instruments and singing is forbidden according to Islam.
At Herbert Morrison Primary in Lambeth, 29 per cent of children come from mainly Somalian Muslim families.
Headmistress Eileen Ross said some parents ‘don’t want children to play musical instruments and they don’t have music in their homes’. …