LGBTQ+ in schools – When Muslims met the Minister of Education
(Coverage by Hamza Malik)
What happened that day?
SETTING THE STAGE
In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
On Wednesday July 26, 2023, a group of concerned Muslims representing the wider community met with the Minister of Education Rachna Singh as well as her other staff members.
Our goal was to present and discuss our concerns on the alarming and harmful nature of the province-wide SOGI 123 curriculum that we believe is not only corrupting and sexualizing the minds of young Muslim children, but also distorting the natural pure fitra of ALL children, and confusing them about their God-centric morality.
As many of you may know, there are countless public schools across North America (not just BC or Canada) that have been subject to much controversy in recent years.
This is due to mandatory ‘sexual education’ classes and curriculums, where children as young as 5 years old are taught that there are more than 2 genders and that same-sex relationships, single parenthood and queer identity are to be celebrated, and sexually explicit content is taught to children (among a series of other things).
In some cases, young children are even encouraged to transition and change their gender, while their parents have zero clue about what is going on.
But we digress.
Eight members of the Muslim community met with Minister Singh and her team. This included brothers Furquan Gehlen, Hamza Malik, Omar Abdul Fatah, Raza Mirani, Mufti Yahya Momla , and a mix of PAC members, concerned parents, Muslim schoolteachers and other grassroots activists.
As mentioned above, Minister Singh was also not alone. In attendance with Minister, were the following colleagues:
- Melanie Stewart, Assistant Deputy Minister, Ministry of Education
- Haiqa Cheema, Assistant Deputy Minister, Ministry of Attorney General and Director of Policy, Office of the Premier
- Kelly Sather, Chief of Staff, Ministry of Education
- Balkaran Singh, Executive Assistant, Ministers Office
THE MEETING FORMAT
The format was simple.
Minister Singh would begin the meeting with opening remarks on the SOGI curriculum (~10 minutes). Her goal was to clear up potential misconceptions that we may have about SOGI.
Following this, it would then be our turn to present our concerns, one-by-one, within the span of an hour. Between the 8 of us, we each had about 5-10 minutes to speak. That was where we presented our main concerns with SOGI-123 in a systematic and coordinated fashion (more on the details of what we said in a bit)
After our speaking time was up, Minister Singh would then address our concerns and objections.
After this, the discussion floor would open up. This was more or less open-ended. Minister Singh’s staff and associates were also participants (more on some specific points of interest here, in a bit as well)
WHAT WAS DISCUSSED?
Minister Singh’s main points:
Minister Singh’s opening remarks were pretty much what all of us expected. There was a lot of fluff talk and platitudes about how SOGI-123 was designed to ‘recognize’ marginalized communities.
Below is a more detailed breakdown of her points:
- Recognizing marginalized communities, as a marginalized community ourselves and interacting with groups that we disagree with, is a vital part of what it means to live in a pluralistic society.
- Minister Singh’s advocacy for pro-LGBTQ+ education, was just a natural extension of her anti-racism advocacy. Just as minorities deserve to be treated with respect, and white people should be educated on their ‘privilege’, the LGBTQ+ community should also be respected, celebrated and uplifted.
- In her opinion, a lot of parents who were worried about SOGI-123 are simply operating on a sense of baseless fear and paranoia. Usually because of the propaganda from the evil white-supremacists of the dastardly right-wing
- While she respects everyone’s religion, it’s important for us all to stand in solidarity with one another (if this sounds redundant and similar to the points I listed above, it’s because it is. A lot of her remarks were fluff statements, and her repeating her main points)
Worth pointing out that while all of this was happening, Minister Singh’s staff and associates were diligently taking notes. The BCMA joint statement and document on the Muslim community’s position on LGBTQ+ education was also shared with them prior to the meeting as a foundational document and reshared with printed copies at the start of the meeting.
Before getting to the main arguments from the Muslim community’s side, it is worth pointing out that brother Furquan Gehlen opened the floor by pointing out that in all of his years a grass-roots activist, he had never encountered as much backlash, anger, and fervor from Muslims over an issue as he did on SOGI-123. With this, brother Furquan set the stage for the rest of the Muslim members to speak.
The Muslim community’s contentions:
- The centrality of the SOGI curriculum. We demand that the curriculum be restricted to a single course or lesson so parents can easily and safely opt their children out of it on religious grounds or any other beliefs they have per Charter Rights.
- The lack of privacy in all-female bathrooms, and the fact that transgender women (biological men) can access their spaces
- The bathroom policy needs to be reviewed and take into account privacy, safety and the need for bathrooms for boys and girls to be for biological boys and girls only.
- SOGI 123 is exploiting the imagination of children by telling them things about men and women that they are not at an age to understand
- A hostile and intolerant cancel culture has prevailed in Canadian society. Anyone who speaks up against the LGBTQ+ agenda is a bigot, transphobe, homophobe who is at risk of losing their job. We experienced this first hand when we did not get any incident reports and stories from parents when we were trying to collect them for the meeting. Only when we made the submission anonymous, did parents feel safe enough to send in their stories using our google form.
- Diversity in Canada today only means diversity in skin color or sexuality. Progressive society does NOT tolerate a diversity in thought on certain issues, such as whether LGBTQ+ is moral, let alone something that our impressionable children should be learning
- Many personal stories of actual high-profile and unreported incidents were summarized in how children were being harassed for not participating in LGBTQ+ lessons.
- Personal stories of how children and teens were negatively being affected and influenced by this perverse rhetoric
- A concerned parent was also present to provide her children’s firsthand experience in dealing with hostility for refusing to participate in the LGBTQ+ curriculum
- Highlighting our anger at the Prime Minister and certain politicians who accuse Muslims of being ‘misinformed’ by ‘white supremacy rhetoric’. We had to reiterate our stance that as a Muslim community, our politics is not confined to the binaries of the left vs. right culture.. We can agree with both parties on different issues, depending on the issue of concern.
THE DISCUSSION AND SOME REFLECTIONS:
After we presented our concerns, a thorough discussion period was held.
Minister Singh started by sharing a personal story of her father (who always voted Liberal) who was once anti-LGBTQ+ because he didn’t understand it. But as time passed, her father became more open minded and was happy with his grandson (Singh’s son) for attending a Pride parade.
She also pointed out how her Indian culture also considers gay relationships and queer identity to be immoral. But now, even India is progressive because the Supreme Court de-criminalized gay marriage.
What these remarks insinuated was that the Muslim community was basically like her father. A good group of people who are simply not caught up with today’s morality.
Despite us clarifying that we were well-informed and read up on the contents of SOGI-123 and what it was all about, Minister Singh’s would often insinuate in a roundabout way that we were just operating on fear and misinformation.
Minister Singh even concluded the meeting by emphasizing that Muslims must be aware of and not misinformed or influenced by American right-wing rhetoric. All of that DESPITE our members opening remarks expressing their anger at such an insinuation.
Imam Momla had to interject at the end to emphasize once again that Muslims are not being misinformed or misled by false information about the SOGI curriculum. Moreover, despite all of our anecdotes and a wealth of experiences that were shared concerning teacher-on-student bullying and the lack of privacy in all-female bathrooms, Minister Singh and her team were often whitewashing and undermining these cases as fringe examples.
CONCLUSION:
We concluded the meeting by asking for a follow-up session and an update regarding amendments to school policies. Minster Singh’s said that a follow-up may come in the form of a meeting or an email and the session was concluded.
The points brought up were very powerful and it was apparent that her associates took notice and made note of our points.
We don’t think that Minster Singh’s and her team expected us to be as organized in our arguments as we were.
We expect further meetings to be held as we continue to make our points and also provide real experiences that community members are reporting.
We have a real opportunity to provide input resulting in changes in how SOGI 123 is implemented, but we need to provide more evidence of its effects to strengthen our arguments.
GOING FORWARD:
As part of our lobbying efforts to provide Safe Education for all and for our future meetings with the BC Education Ministry, please help us to keep accumulating more first-hand experiences.
Please fill out the following form at this link if you have experienced or observed any negative effects from SOGI 123: https://forms.gle/wCFYuQVsQT1W9ygs7. Feel free to forward this to your contacts from all communities.
Note: The scope of this survey has now been expanded to include teachers and school staff, so they can also provide their feedback. The survey is open to all communities. The survey is completely anonymous as no personal details are collected.
ACTION ITEMS FOR THE NEXT POTENTIAL MEETING:
- A review of our points to be undertaken by the Education Ministry
- A written response on what changes will be made to accommodate our concerns
- A follow-up meeting to continue this conversation within the next few months
- Collect and compile more first-hand experiences from our ongoing and expanded survey
JazakumAllah Khayran and regards,
Concerned Muslim community members
To stay up-to-date with safe educational resources and programs, visit our website www.safeeducationalliance.org.