Abbreviation | MET |
---|---|
Formation | 1966 |
Type | Educational organization |
Location |
|
Coordinates | 51°34′09.3″N 0°06′41.9″W / 51.569250°N 0.111639°W |
Chairman
|
Prof Ghulam Sarwar |
Website | MET |
Muslim Educational Trust(also called MET) is a educational organization offering information, advice and publications about education and the educational needs of children to parents in particular. It is based in London.
Starting in the 1970s, the Trust has been involved in a movement by British Muslims to include Muslim values in the educational system. A controversial aspect of this was the withdrawal of Muslim children, especially Muslim girls from integrated schools as secular single-sex schooling died out in England. Less controversial were efforts to encourage religious education in Britain to expand beyond the teaching of Islam. The Trust also began supporting efforts to open private Islamic schools in 1974, and by 1992, 23 Islamic schools were open, all supported by the Trust. Important leaders in this movement were Ibrahim Hewitt Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), Afzal Rahman, and Gulam Sarwar. In 1991, Sarwar wrote a book, British Muslims and Schools, which focuses on why such schools should exist and why they should receive public funding like other British schools.
Human Rights Activist Nuzhat Abbas has criticized MET for supplying literature on sexual education that echos the anti-LGBT views of clerics like Sheikh Sarkawy, formerly of London Central Mosque. Some of this criticism stems from the Trust's publishing of an anti-LGBT views in a book introducing the teachings of the Qur'an by Ibrahim Hewitt entitled, What Doe Islam Say?.