London Muslim urges all Muslims throughout London to spare a moment today and support our brothers at City University who have had their own prayer facility taken away by the Vice Chancellor Prof Weinberg.
The current situation is simply untenable with hundreds of Muslim students forced to conduct Jumma prayers outside in Northampton Square through the short sighted folly of the Vice Chancellor.
City Muslims have a campaign website with details on how to support them. London Muslim will be writing to Professor Weinberg (J.R.Weinberg@city.ac.uk) and I urge others to do the same. However, please keep it decent.
Moreover Muslim students are also urging their embassies to help lobby City to continue to keep up the pressure and prevent this injustice.
Sigh. As has been said in previous comments on this topic, according to less extreme Muslim scholars this whole thing is utterly unnecessary; Muslims can pray just about anywhere, including the new prayer room.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.virtualmosque.co.uk/so-called-muslims-clerics-get-it-wrong-again/
These are the sort of modern, forward looking, non-extreme Muslims City will have been taking advice from, no doubt, prior to making this decision.
The new prayer room was set up in a safe and secure location inside the university buildings to protect Muslim students from any more attacks out in the street.
The demand to remain the only faith group on the campus privileged with its own dedicated faith facilities and refusing to share a room with other faith groups just makes (unfortunately, all) Muslims look selfish, discriminatory and separatist.
I wonder whether you have ever visited City Uni and have the faintest clue about how many Muslims there are there and how much care is taken to make sure their needs and preferences are taken into account? I dare say if you contacted the university they would be happy to show you.
I am trying to think what must be in your mind. Perhaps you think, because it's called "City", it's full of posh, white, middle-class offspring of extremely well-off stockbroker types. If so, I think you would be very surprised by the truth. Local Muslims are very much in the majority for some subjects and well represented in most others. And of course there are many other Muslims from all over the world.
I suppose we'll all have to put up with being inconvenienced by this tiny minority with their selfish misinterpretation of Islam.
Just like when all the other students, Muslim or not, have to be distracted during important exams by one student who decides it's better to cough all the way through, for hours, "because it's Ramadan and they can't drink water or eat cough sweets or drink cough medicine". Not an interpretation of Islam any sensible Iman would come up with but, no, everyone else has to suffer because of that one person's warped interpretation.
I can't help thinking that The Prophet (PBUH) would have had a bit more common sense and concern for others.
Likewise, I wonder what he really might have said about this case, here in this country, in this modern world, in a university full of people from all over the world and many from just down the road in the East End, of all different faiths and beliefs, (almost) all trying to work and live together harmoniously.
Why should a few Muslims continue to demand they be treated more favourably than all other students when, according to scholars, it's completely unnecessary?
You do your claim to be a moderate, sensible, modern Muslim no favours at all by siding with the selfish, separatist element on this one.
I think it says a lot about who's behind this that they're urging Muslim students to **contact their embassies**.
ReplyDeleteA huge proportion of the Muslim students at City University come from London!
Perhaps if these people were a bit more tuned in to the UK, they might have suggested Muslim students contact their MPs: George Galloway MP, Jim Fitzpatick MP, Meg Hillier MP, Diane Abbott MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, etc etc...
Duh! :(