Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in Catholic schools, say church
leaders
By Simon Caldwell
Last updated at 11:44 AM on 02nd December 2008
Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school,
Church leaders have said.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want special toilet
facilities in schools to be adapted for Islamic cleaning rituals.
Their demands will shock both Catholic parents and the Government
because they go way beyond the legal requirements on catering for the
rights and needs of religious minorities.
But the bishops are keen to answer critics who say religious schools sow
division - and to show that they are leading the way in building bridges
between people of different faiths.
The bishops acknowledge in a new document proposing the measures that 30
per cent of pupils attending Catholic schools hold a non-Christian
faith.
"If practicable, a room (or rooms) might be made available for the use
of pupils and staff from other faiths for prayer," the bishops said in
the document, Catholic Schools, Children of Other Faiths and Community
Cohesion
"Existing toilet facilities might be adapted to accommodate individual
ritual cleansing which is sometimes part of religious lifestyle and
worship,” they said.
"If such space is not available on a permanent or regular basis, extra
efforts might be made to address such need for major religious
festivals."
The Islamic cleansing ritual, called "Wudhu", is carried out by Muslims
before they pray.
Islam teaches that Muslims are unfit for prayer if they have not
performed Wudhu after breaking wind or using the toilet.
Wudhu involves washing the face, hands, arms and feet three times each,
gargling the mouth three times and washing the neck and inside the nose
and ears. Some Muslims also wash their private parts.
Catholic schools would need to install bidets, foot spas and hoses to
facilitate such extensive cleansing rituals, Muslims say.
The document has been published by the Catholic Education Service, an
agency of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
But it has been personally approved by Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of
Birmingham and the favourite to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor
next year as the leader of the country’s 4.3 million Catholics.
It will inevitably lead to accusations that the Catholic Church is ready
to cave in to the Government’s agenda and some Catholics have questioned
the wisdom of the policies as well as the cost.
Daphne McLeod, a former Catholic head teacher from south London, said it
would be "terribly expensive" for the country's 2,300 Catholic primary
and secondary schools to provide ritual cleansing facilities.
She said: "If Muslim parents choose a Catholic school then they accept
that it is going to be a Catholic school and there will not be
facilities for ritual cleansing and prayer rooms.
"They do their ritual cleansing before they go to a mosque, but they are
not going to a mosque.
"I don't think the bishops should go looking for problems. Where will it
stop?"
But Majid Khatme, a Muslim who sent his children to a London Catholic
school, said he was delighted by the gesture.
"It is very kind of the bishops if they give this facility for Muslims
to pray," he said.
"I would love to send a letter of thanks to the bishops, really. If they
do this all Muslims in Britain will be thankful to the Catholic Church
to have facilities to pray. It is very, very encouraging.
Archbishop Nichols, the chairman of the bishops' Department for
Education and Formation, said in his foreword to the document that
inter-faith dialogue has become increasingly important to the Church “as
the presence of other faith communities grows and becomes more evident
in our society”.
He said that the publication was being “offered to our schools in the
hope that the good work already being done in them for children and
young people of other faiths can be further strengthened and so that the
lives of all our pupils, students and staff can be enriched”.
The document also urges head teachers to “keep under review” all
policies which touched on other religions, including school uniform,
dietary needs and the time-tabling of events.
Laura McCann, spokeswoman for the Catholic Education Service, said it
would be a matter for the governing body of each school to decide
whether to adopt the recommendations.
“It would depend on the resources that they have and also other factors
such as the numbers of non-Catholic pupils attending the school,” she
said.
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Tuesday, 2 December 2008
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