Strange teaching content in religious education lessons at a primary school in Flachgau is causing quite a stir. Outraged parents are wondering why their children were forced to sing a religious Islamic song in Catholic religious education lessons.
‘Ramadan is the most beautiful time of the year’ is one line of a Ramadan song that the children in a fourth grade primary school had to sing at the behest of their religion teacher. The school is not in Cairo in Egypt, Tehran or somewhere in Syria, but in Salzburg’s Flachgau region. A mother was all the more surprised when her daughter told her about her religious education lessons and asked why ‘Allah is so big’, reports the Kronen Zeitung newspaper.
According to the girl’s account, the lessons were about Islam and its customs. The song in question was apparently also sung in the course of the lesson. The fact that the mother then had to explain to her daughter “that we have our God and not Allah” annoyed the woman enormously, reports the newspaper.
As expected, the Salzburg specialist inspector for Catholic religious education was not forthcoming with the newspaper. She said that the teacher had ‘done nothing wrong’ in terms of the curriculum and interreligious dialogue. The song in question, the ‘Ramadan Rap’, came from the textbook for Muslim religious education.
Incidentally, there is said to be only one pupil of Muslim faith in the class in question – a rarity these days anyway. The question arises as to who the teacher was trying to please with her ‘Ramadan rap’ in Catholic religious education of all places.
Salzburgerin entsetzt: Ihr Kind musste in Religionsstunde Ramadan-Lied singen – Unzensuriert