Mr Abbas Alvi (left) with Mr Athar Zaidi
Penrith, an outer suburb in Sydney’s west has rejected a racist and anti-Muslim campaign by accepting the building of a community centre in the area.
After a two hour debate Penrith Council last week voted to approve the development application by the Mohammadi Welfare Association for an Islamic Centre in Kemps Creek. The vote was split seven councillors voting for including the mayor Mr Fowler, and five councillors voting against.
The meeting was interrupted several times to calm the rowdy audience and a member of the public was ejected for calling the mayor, a liar.
Demonstrators for and against the application gathered in front of the Penrith Civic Centre before the approval meeting with a heavy police presence.
There were ugly scenes outside the building where an Asian protester was targeted with racist slurs while an African woman was told she had Ebola.
The vicious campaign against the Centre was spearheaded by far right organisation Australia First, neo-nazis and local racist elements.
However a large number of local community members in addition to Muslims demonstrated in support of the Centre with slogans “Muslims are welcome, racists are not” and outnumbered those who were against the Centre.
Muhammadi Welfare Association Incorporated, had applied to build a community centre and place of worship in Clifton Avenue, Kemps Creek within the greater Penrith area.
The secretary of the association Mr Abbas Alvi, a poet-musician and a widely respected community leader said, “ We are mainly an Urdu speaking community from the Indian subcontinent whose members now belonging to four generations who have been living in the surrounding area for more than 30 years”.
“We serve a multicultural ethnic community diaspora of Western Sydney and our members belong to professions like community services, medicine, engineering, IT, security, education, agriculture, trade and many other fields”, he said.
Mr Alvi assured that the centre will welcome all community members for interfaith dialogues, networking and appreciation of our diverse cultural background in order to promote peace and harmony in our society.
The President of the association, Mr Athar Zaidi said he would be more than willing to talk to the protesters and tell them there was nothing to fear.
“I think people are scared of the unknown. If we have a chance to explain to them who we are, they would see that we are just normal people’, he said.
Mr Alvi announced that when the Centre was completed he would love the whole Penrith community join and celebrate its opening.
Muslim children not only need Masajid, halal meat. Eid Holidays but they need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their development period also. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school. Legally, the state has an obligation to respect the rights of parents to ensure that ‘education and teaching(of their children) is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.’ The schools must satisfy the spiritual, moral, social, and cultural needs of Muslim pupils. State schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers are not in a position to satisfy their needs. A good school is not just a knowledge factory or a conveyor belt for churning out exam passes – it is a community, a family. A community is held together by common values and principles
Bilingual Muslims children have a right, as much as any other faith group, to be taught their culture, languages and faith alongside a mainstream curriculum. More faith schools will be opened under sweeping reforms of the education system in England. There is a dire need for the growth of state funded Muslim schools to meet the growing needs and demands of the Muslim parents and children. Now the time has come that parents and community should take over the running of their local schools. Parent-run schools will give the diversity, the choice and the competition that the wealthy have in the private sector. Parents can perform a better job than the Local Authority because parents have a genuine vested interest. The Local Authority simply cannot be trusted.
Indiscipline, incivility, binge drinking, drug addiction, gun and knife crimes, teenage pregnancies and abortion are part and parcel of British schooling. These are the reasons why majority of Muslim parents would like to send their children to Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. Only less than 5% attend Muslim schools and more than 95% keep on attending state and church schools to be mis-educated and de-educated by non-Muslim monolingual teachers.
The demand for Muslim schools comes from parents who want their children a safe environment with an Islamic ethos. Parents see Muslim schools where children can develop their Islamic Identity where they won’t feel stigmatised for being Muslims and they can feel confident about their faith. Muslim schools are working to try to create a bridge between communities. There is a belief among ethnic minority parents that the British schooling does not adequately address their cultural needs. Failing to meet this need could result in feeling resentment among a group who already feel excluded. Setting up Muslim school is a defensive response. State schools with monolingual teachers are not capable to teach English to bilingual Muslim children. Bilingual teachers are needed to teach English to such children along with their mother tongue. According to a number of studies, a child will not learn a second language if his first language is ignored.
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http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
What appalling rubbish. What skewered nonsense. It was totally evident that despite all the outsiders brought it by your lot, and those on the left who are misguided enough to support you even though you’d never do the same for their ideological causes such as gay marriage, the locals resoundingly howled you down.
What a load of rubbish. .. enola and asian rants at council…. no one is racist..penrith is expressing their veiws and why there is a need for the building…what is taught in the religion. .. .there are not the services to accomodate the sewerage the traffic etc…. because of this we are called racist….what it is is if we dont agrre to your demands u call us names.m simular to the halal conflict that is happening…..its not needed in australia… if u want halal pat extra for the 2percent that want it