Muslims sound alarm over schools

The teacher could not believe what he overheard. The "visiting" imam was launching into a tirade against the Jews and Americans that bordered on the ludicrous.

But then came the clincher, he recalled. "The imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat them."

The imam was told to ease up on the inflammatory language after staff objected.

Werribee College is from all accounts an Islamic school with a difference. According to former staff it was a longstanding practice of the school principal, Omar Hallak, to have Muslim staff sleep on the premises after big international terror attacks such as those in Bali and the London tube bombings to prevent retributive attacks.

The Sunday Age has been told that Werribee College appears intent on exporting its particular brand of Islam to Indonesia, an achievement made possible by generous commonwealth and state grants — estimated to be in excess of $3 million a year.

Canberra's big spending laissez-faire approach to non-government school funding, intended by former education minister David Kemp to boost the numbers of Christian schools, has fuelled an increase in community-based Islamic schools across Australia which qualify for the same subsidies.

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Although the vast majority of these schools — established schools such as King Khalid Islamic College in North Coburg or newer schools such as Mount Hira College in Keysborough — are run openly and with regular contact and activities with students from non-Muslim schools, there are a small number, including Werribee, that shun scrutiny and contact.

Last week, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils warned that young Muslims were prey to visiting imams and religious scholars. Council president Ameer Ali said Muslim extremists were posing a problem for "vulnerable and impressionable youth". Visiting imams were being brought to Australia by new and emerging groups unknown to the community, he said. His words were endorsed by outspoken Sydney cleric Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, who said the Muslim community had not done enough to confront extremists.

Inquiries by The Sunday Age last week revealed an alarming lack of official scrutiny not just of Muslim schools but of a plethora of non-government schools advocating all manner of religious faith. State and federal education departments have little idea of the curriculum content for junior grades, the quality of education being offered or extremist views that may be perpetuated in the name of religion.

Werribee College appears to be the domain of Mr Hallak and his family, who last week declined invitations to talk to The Sunday Age about the above incident involving the visiting imam and the school's management practices.

As with all non-government schools, Werribee College is subject to few checks. It is not a member of the Australian Council for Islamic Education in Schools that has a charter to promote tolerance, oppose violence and condemn hatred. Although children at year 12 perform well above average, there are concerns among former teachers and members of Melbourne's Islamic community about the overall quality of education the 600-plus students receive.

The treatment of female staff and students has become an issue over recent years, with attempts to pay female teachers less, prevent them from sharing offices with male teachers and the imposition of strict dress codes.

While such practices have alarmed education professionals, teacher unions and the broader Muslim community, there is a reluctance to deal with them and regulatory hurdles that make this difficult. Cultural and religious sensitivities make investigations tricky unless there has been an official complaint. "Without somebody making a sworn statement, it is hard to act without being accused of racial or cultural bias," said a prominent education professional who declined to be identified.

Although the Federal Government seeks to promote "a pluralist and tolerant society" in providing hundreds of millions of dollars to non-government schools, it carries out no day-to-day monitoring of courses or management standards. This is left to the states, whose monitoring is at best cursory.

Even then, there is little direct state control over the quality of teaching or the content of courses except at year 11 and 12 level. Like the Christian schools the funding regime was intended to encourage, Muslim schools are free to shape and direct students in a religious environment of their choosing. And there is nothing illegal about teaching students about the Taliban, Osama bin Laden or extreme interpretations of Islam.

Keysar Trad, the founder of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, says the proliferation of Islamic schools is causing concern in the Muslim community. "This proliferation means that small groups can go and set up schools and run them in the name if Islam. They are accountable to nobody but themselves. But the problem is that the argument can also be made about oddball Christian schools as well," he said. "Political, religious and ethnic divisions within the community also make it hard to agree on standards. There are groups out there we know nothing about."

Dr Fethi Mansouri, associate professor of internal and political studies at Deakin University, says it would be a mistake to cut off funding to Islamic schools — such a move could force the schools and visiting imams into remote corners of society where there was no scrutiny or accountability. "In France and Holland there is no funding for religious schools and that has led to serious problems," he said.

"A better idea is to have non-government schools sign off on an agreed set of principles which would be conditional for funding. The state school system has identified a set of values, there is no reason why they could not be applied to non-government schools."

There are seven known Islamic schools in Victoria employing about 360 teachers — including a significant number of non-Muslims — teaching an estimated 5000 students. With combined state and federal funding averaging about $7000 for each student, the total taxpayer commitment is more than $32 million a year.

Prejudice in a class of its own

The teacher was alarmed by what she discovered in the school library. An image of Christ in a book on comparative religion had been defaced.

When she asked students to explain, they told her that another teacher, a devout Muslim, had asked them to demonstrate that Islam was the one true faith by striking the picture with sharpened pencils.

"They told me they had been made to line up and one by one stab the picture," the teacher told The Sunday Age. "As far as I know, the book is still in the library."

It was not the first incident or the last that would disturb this teacher — and several others — during her two years at one of Melbourne's lesser-known Islamic schools.

At the same school, the teacher said, complaints by the science co-ordinator about an incompetent year 12 physics teacher were dismissed by the principal on the grounds that the teacher "was hired to teach about Islam, which he was very good at". At other Muslim schools, The Sunday Age has been told, administrators banned all overt signs of other faiths.

In one case a non-Muslim member of staff was told to remove a crucifix from the dashboard of a car parked in view of the students and a female Hindu teacher was ordered to remove marriage jewellery.

The teacher, who was dismissed from the school because she was "over qualified", is now employed at a Christian faith-based school.

She says she has no regrets about leaving. "The atmosphere at the school was unhealthy," she said. "When you asked children to write about their favourite hero, they nearly always wrote about Osama bin Laden."

Many of these incidents have been reported to the Australian Federal Police, who interviewed the teacher. ASIO also knows about the claims, and is believed to regularly make background checks.