Row over Conversion of Glasgow Catholic School Continues

|TOP|An ongoing row over the possible conversion of a Catholic school in Glasgow into Scotland’s first Muslim school is continuing with no sign of resolution.

Divisions over the future of St Albert’s RC primary in Pollokshields deepened recently when Muslim parents interrupted the Friday Mass at various intervals to withdraw their children.

Father John Gannon, who led the Mass, described the parents as “extremists”, who in turn retorted that the parish priest was potentially inciting “religious and racial hatred”.

Parents were given the opportunity to meet with leaders of the Catholic Church in Scotland last week, although a spokesman for the Church said, "St Albert's is a Catholic school and therefore it is perfectly normal for a priest to celebrate Mass there regularly.

“Children at the school are taught to respect all faiths and no-one is obliged to assist at religious ceremonies . . . Those who chose to disrupt the children's observance with noisy protest do themselves no favours."

The pupils were withdrawn after allegations were made that the children were forced to participate in Christian services at the school because there were no staff available to supervise them elsewhere.

The allegations were followed by a call from a number of Muslims in the local community for the school to convert its faith in order to better represent its predominantly Muslim population – around 75 per cent.

|QUOTE|Glasgow’s largest mosques and Muslim organisations founded the Campaign for Muslim Schools last year in an effort to bring about the establishment of Scotland’s first state-funded Muslim school. St Albert’s is particularly attractive to the campaigners because of its situation in Pollokshields, home to Scotland’s largest Pakistani community.

Spokesman for the Campaign for Muslim Schools, Osama Saeed, said St Albert’s was a particular focus because it is inappropriate for Muslim children to be roped into Christian observances, reports The Guardian.

Although parents have the right to withdraw their pupils from Christian practices at the school, which is explained to them when they enrol their children, Saeed still fears that children taken out of such practices may feel excluded from the rest of the class. He thinks it would be better if they could just be sent to a Muslim school.

"The national policy on faith schools is that, whenever there is a demand from a faith community, there should be a school," says Saeed, who is also a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain. "Ergo, there should be a Muslim school here."

Others are unsure, however, particularly given the sectarian tensions in Scotland that have been attributed to faith schools.

What is also unclear is whether there is an actual demand for local Muslims to have their own school. The position of Glasgow City Council is that there is no “consensus in favour of such a school from the diverse Muslim community itself, nor from across the wider community".

Amanullah de Sondy, a research fellow at the Centre for Islam at Glasgow University, reiterated the stance of the City Council.

|AD|"The campaign does not speak for all Muslims," he says. "It is too simple to say that because the Catholics have a school the Muslims must too. The church has a long history of running schools in Scotland; but the Muslim community does not have the hierarchy or the structures to run schools yet. And taking an isolationist approach is not the right way forward."

Muslims in the community also seem to be divided on the issue. Mohammed Manir, working in Aap Ki Passand, a local Pakistani marriage bureau, said: "I grew up in Pakistan, where children were taught together in Catholic schools and it was fine.”

One Sikh father waiting at the gates of St Albert’s for his children to come out of school expressed anger at the proposal.

Karnal Singh, whose children make up the some 13 per cent of Sikh pupils at the school, said: "I am happy for my children to go to a Catholic school. I don't want it to become Muslim. We are not asking for our own schools. Why do they have to?”

Fr John Gannon said. "There is probably no organisation in Scotland more supportive of the notion that there should be Muslim faith schools than the Catholic church," he says. "But it may be that to poach schools is not the best way to go about it."

He added that the staff at St Albert's has built up a strong relationship with Pollokshields's Muslim community. "When parents say they want the school to become Muslim, they seem to think that the teachers would stay on, but of course that wouldn't happen," he says. "There is some serious confusion about what such a change would mean."