I had gone into the school on behalf of Hidayah, an organisation that supports LGBTQI Muslims (Photo: Hidayah)

Whilst hundreds of parents protested RSE lessons outside Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, I was with the year 7 and 8 students from a different school.

This school was around 75 per cent Muslim, and I had gone in on behalf of Hidayah, an organisation that supports LGBTQI Muslims.

The response I got, given what the general feeling in the Islamic community is towards LGBT people, was phenomenal. Several children told me they were LGBT, and that they’d never told anyone before.

Nearly all the children were extremely positive, polite and asked lots of questions. Several had been told by their parents that same-sex relationships are ‘haraam’, or sinful. That’s why the work Hidayah does is so valuable.




One of the things that would help these children most is inclusive RSE. Parliament is debating a petition with over 100,000 signatures that requests the right to withdraw a child from compulsory RSE lessons.

This completely undermines the term ‘compulsory’ and if the government chooses to give way to this minority, the children that need this education most may be pulled out of lessons, separated from their classmates, and othered. For some, this will come at a time when they are already starting to feel different.

Very few schools have actually taken up the power they have to promote positive teachings about LGBT people.

Some children have no idea that it’s even possible to be both gay and Muslim. They’ve never been given space to explore these topics, and no one has ever sat them down and told them ‘actually, being LGBT is okay’.

This is dangerous and hurtful, for them as children and as young adults. As children, they fail to recognise obvious difference as okay – say, when a child (like mine does) has two mothers or two fathers – and don’t see that education about difference is part and parcel of dealing with islamophobia and racism.

That’s what most ‘liberal’ Muslims have realised – that LGBT people and Muslims face similar oppression, and it’s in our interest to work together, even when one doesn’t identify as both, or even believe one can be both.

As young adults, especially young adults who are experimenting with LGBT identities, it makes them incredibly unsafe. They can’t – and therefore don’t – tell their parents what they’re doing, who they’re seeing and where they’re going, and they know nothing of the safer sex practices that will protect them from HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

This exposes them also to the risk of grooming and sexual abuse. An adult who listens and allows them to explore will gain their trust easily, as they don’t have that environment at home.

Section 28 prevented a generation of children from knowledge that would’ve helped them stay safe as they explored.

Since it’s been gone, however, very few schools have actually taken up the power they have to promote positive teachings about LGBT people.

That’s why I respect Andrew Moffat, assistant head of Parkfield Community School, so much. He took the baton that the community was handed when Section 28 was abolished and tried to make life better for these kids.



He’s been met with very forceful opposition, but that hasn’t stopped him. Recently, however, a beacon of hope: the head of OFSTED, the organisation that reviews the quality of schools and teaching, insisted that Mr Moffat’s efforts were the right thing to do, and that children need to be taught to be tolerant of difference in society.

That’s part of what has made me so heartened. Once these kids knew they had nothing to fear, they all felt okay about welcoming LGBT people into their faith.

If they’d had Mr Moffat, maybe that lesson would already have been taught, and my work would be irrelevant.

That’s my real dream: to get to the point where LGBT Muslims are accepted, and I’m not needed anymore. But until that, we are out here, and you’re welcome to join our broad mosque.

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