By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
I cannot stand Cristina Odone, and the feeling is mutual. We haven't spoken for years, since the week when, as deputy editor of the New Statesman, she commissioned a hatchet profile on me by a female journalist (of course), who had met me once on a radio show. Even I, well used to abrasive attacks, was knocked back by the virulence in a left-wing magazine I had previously worked for. Time has not healed that bruise, and never will.
It is hard to make fair, objective judgements when there is such animosity. It can be done, one hopes. Odone on, say, the sanctity of life, is sincere and credible. She is a canny networker and obviously has flair. But her new report on faith schools for the Centre for Policy Studies, In Bad Faith: The New Betrayal of Faith Schools, is insufferable.
She enthuses over faith-based schools, especially Muslim schools, where our children are apparently taught to be Muslim and British (you don't say), as if, like donkeys and horses, we have to be specially trained into behaviours to get to this state of grace.
As usual, subtle warnings run through this report. Apologist Muslim organisations use blackmail. Give them what they want or many more Muslims will become domestic hellhounds. If the state does not agree to fund further educational institutions of cultural, religious and gender apartheid, Muslim girls will be "disappeared", forced into marriages. From segregated schools, which, says Odone, are "crucial to traditional Muslim families", they will one day go into higher education. Read more ...
I cannot stand Cristina Odone, and the feeling is mutual. We haven't spoken for years, since the week when, as deputy editor of the New Statesman, she commissioned a hatchet profile on me by a female journalist (of course), who had met me once on a radio show. Even I, well used to abrasive attacks, was knocked back by the virulence in a left-wing magazine I had previously worked for. Time has not healed that bruise, and never will.
It is hard to make fair, objective judgements when there is such animosity. It can be done, one hopes. Odone on, say, the sanctity of life, is sincere and credible. She is a canny networker and obviously has flair. But her new report on faith schools for the Centre for Policy Studies, In Bad Faith: The New Betrayal of Faith Schools, is insufferable.
She enthuses over faith-based schools, especially Muslim schools, where our children are apparently taught to be Muslim and British (you don't say), as if, like donkeys and horses, we have to be specially trained into behaviours to get to this state of grace.
As usual, subtle warnings run through this report. Apologist Muslim organisations use blackmail. Give them what they want or many more Muslims will become domestic hellhounds. If the state does not agree to fund further educational institutions of cultural, religious and gender apartheid, Muslim girls will be "disappeared", forced into marriages. From segregated schools, which, says Odone, are "crucial to traditional Muslim families", they will one day go into higher education. Read more ...
Source: The Independent
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