[RT] A Swedish school decided to familiarize its fifth-graders with Islamic worshipping by having a teacher recite Koranic verse to them and having them pray facing Mecca, in a bizarre set-up the educators called “role play.”
An offbeat “religion lesson” was taught at the Bjurbäck school situated in the south of Sweden, according to Samhallsnytt news outlet. An outraged parent said pupils were told to face the Kaaba and kneel on prayer mats, while the whole class was divided by gender, with girls forced to the back of the room.
His daughters “did not even want to be there because they could not understand a word of what the teacher read from the Koran in Arabic,” the man, called Markus, revealed. After the “prayer,” the pupils “would dance to Arabic music and eat Arabic cake” in something used to replicate Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festivities marking the end of compulsory fasting.
Local authorities confirmed the report, with an education official in Emmaboda – a serene southern county where the school is located – telling the news outlet that the class did take place.
When confronted by angry parents, the school management defended the activity, referring to it as “role play.” But the awkward explanation didn’t sit well with Markus who wants the school to apologize and its principal to be suspended.
“Calling this a role play is not OK as it hits me as a parent,” he told the paper. “It’s me, not the school, that raises my children … they go there to learn things that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.”
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[Editor’s Note: This article was written by and first posted at the Russian publication, RT]
