Waltham Forest: Racial profiling at its very worst

You know we’re all in trouble when nine year old Muslim boys and girls are questioned at school about whether or not they should hurt people in the name of their religion.

Over the last few weeks a series of questions were sent to school children in Waltham forest as young as nine to ascertain whether or not they had tendencies of extremism. And whilst the questionnaire went to all children, there’s no doubt, given the questions and the purpose of the project that it was the Muslim children who was being targeted by this project.

The project's-original web page run by the Charity Family Action, which has been edited in the last few days, originally said its purpose, where appropriate, was "to identify the initial seeds of radicalisation with children of primary school age".

Imagine for second your own child had these propositions put to them to see if they agreed or disagreed:

“Religious books are to be understood word for word”, “I believe my religion is the only correct one”, “God has a purpose for me” and “I would do what a grown up told me to do even if it seemed odd to me”.

Another leading proposition in the questionnaire states:

“God has a purpose for me” and “If a student was making fun of my race or religion I would try to make them stop even if it meant hurting them.”

Having filled out the questionnaire the student was finally asked to put what faith they hold.

Local parents have been understandably furious with the questionnaire at their children’s school and the local council’s involvement.

This project would be inappropriate and divisive if it was aimed at adults, but to target primary school children is truly shocking and clearly an attack on Muslim communities in the East London area.

This kind of heavy handed demonization aims to characterise Muslim children as potential terrorists. Worse still it actually helps nurture a self fulfilling prophecy by telling Muslim communities ‘we don’t trust you and we need to have a dragnet approach to sift through you one by one’. Perversely, it is this deep distrust of Muslims, along with rise of Islamaphobia, and foreign policy which are all elements that feed into how young Muslim men and women actually become radicalised.

This questionnaire comes on the back of the witch hunt of Muslim School governors in Birmingham identified as the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal.

Community cohesion is not helped by this sort of crude racial and religious profiling. In fact the opposite is true. The organisers of the questionnaire, Family project, either have a pernicious agenda against Muslims or they don’t know the first thing about what alienates communities, or what brings them together.

Either way, serious questions should be asked about their appropriateness to work in this area.

Simon Woolley