I don’t often receive those e-mails that you hear about, I guess people know that I’ll check what it says before repeating it down the pub or passing it on, something that probably doesn’t suit the originators at all. In fact it has only happened once before, but today I received one. The subject-line read “How can you remove this from school history lessons cos it offends a religion” and the subject matter boiled down to the following sentiment “This week, the UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it ‘offended’ the Muslim population which claims it never occurred”. A little Googling shows that it is an old propaganda piece, which has been recently resurrected- presumably in the hope that people have forgotten the truth from the first time around.
I obviously responded to everyone in the e-mail trail that I could find to present the facts, but have so far received no response. I also alerted Islamophobia Watch and, should you receive one, I would urge you to do the same.
For the record, the most recent curriculum changes were to move the focus away from UK-centred history towards more international events. “Changes to the secondary history curriculum, announced last week, which will see less focus on figures such as Churchill, Hitler, and Gandhi from next year. Study of both world wars and the Holocaust, the development of political power, the British empire and slavery remain“.
The other mail I received, by the way, was some time ago which warned that millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money that was allocated to the preparations for the 2012 Olympics was secretly being utilised to build a mosque which would be bigger than St Paul’s Cathedral and hold more people than Wembley Stadium. The truth was that a privately-funded and much smaller mosque was being built vaguely near the site of the Olympic village.
