Muslim parents, you can't have it both ways – if we’re defended against bigotry, so must the LGBT+ community

A mother in Birmingham objected to her child’s school hosting a course that tackles homophobia, but shouldn’t every community in our society deserve protection?

The local press in Birmingham has recently highlighted a story around an outraged Muslim mother objecting to an LGBT+ awareness session being provided at a local community school.

The aim of that session, part of the “No Outsiders” programme, was “to raise awareness of these differences so that children are able to tolerate and accept differences in our society,” according to the headteacher of Parkfield Community School.

The view put forward by the mother, Fatima Shah, was that “children are being told it’s okay to be gay, yet 98 per cent of children at this school are Muslim.”

She went on to add: “It’s a Muslim community”.

The view that there is only one type of Muslim community is as bizarre as it is archaic.

Furthermore, the perception that there are no gay Muslims or that gay and lesbian Muslims have not shaped the history of Islam through literature, the arts, military campaigns, astronomy and other social disciplines, shows the bankruptcy of thinking that makes up the view that being gay and Muslim are two separate and incompatible things.

Anyone who has travelled within Muslim-majority countries, from Morocco through to Iran, will tell you that there is a hidden, but extensive set of LGBT+ communities, many of whom are practising Muslims.

Moreover, within Pakistan and India there has been a history of trans-Muslim communities, many of whom are of Muslim heritage and can only find work in the sex industry.

They have also shaped the history of music, poetry and the arts in Islamic Mughal times, such that many of the artistic pictures of the time depict men and women in passionate clinches and sometimes clad with nothing but the embraces of many and with courtesans watching them as they made love.

This homo-erotic and deeply sexualised culture was embedded in Islamic India in the last 200 years before its disintegration by the East India Tea Company and the British. This was the 18th and 19th century Islam from which the very country of Pakistan was shaped, and from where the majority of the Muslims originate in the UK.

No-one is denying that there is a social conservatism within large sections of Muslim communities in the UK. Indeed, this is what the mother who led the Birmingham protest has symbolised through her views.

Yet, it is perverse in the extreme to believe that all Muslims object to socially liberal values and that all Muslims in her local area would object to a school’s project that challenges bigotry.

One mother has now arranged a petition against the No Outsiders project, calling it “totally wrong”. In her comments there are inferences that all Muslims will object to a programme that challenges bigotry, or in the words of the mother originally speaking to the Birmingham Mail last week, where “children are being told it’s okay to be gay”.

As someone who’s spent the past six years challenging, monitoring and assisting victims of anti-Muslim hate and as the founder of the national Islamophobia monitoring project, Tell MAMA, I have seen at close hand how far-right groups have hijacked liberal values to use against British Muslims, as though they are prehistoric and a threat to our country.

In fact, Shah’s comments have been a gift for groups looking to foment “them and us” views which seek to marginalise Muslims. Shah has in effect, given them a gift which they can point to, painting all Muslims as homophobic – and Ukip has already taken up the mantle by tweeting out on just this issue.

What is so painful about this story is that I remember how hard it was for my colleagues and I to get anti-Islamophobia training and development courses identical to the ethos of the “No Outsiders” programme into schools, further education colleges and universities. It was no easy feat as some institutions shied away from engagement, almost fearful that tackling bigotry was too sensitive for them.

I could hedge a pretty firm bet that the mothers complaining about Parkfield Community School would advocate for such a project, and that they would back projects that tackle Islamophobia and which reduce hatred and intolerance against Muslims.

However, it seems that is as far as it stretches for some, and identical programmes that challenge homophobia become fair game as they are painted as a threat to conservative social values.

Which leads me onto the following: There is a moral bankruptcy in cheerleading courses that tackle Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hate and objecting to courses that tackle homophobia.

The very values that allow for Islamophobia to be challenged need to be defended and re-enforced to challenge other forms of bigotry. You simply cannot accept human rights and reject them when they do not fit into your conservative worldview.

I truly hope that Shah reflects on her actions and realises the following. You can’t teach someone to be gay. You can’t accept and benefit from human rights values and reject them when they are utilised to defend other communities.

Last but not least, if Muslims are to be defended against bigotry, so must every community group in our society. If you start picking and choosing who to protect and defend, then you have inadvertently given up your own rights.

Fiyaz Mughal is founder of Tell MAMA and director of Faith Matters