Parents are allegedly outraged over a non-Islamic school in Netherlands that teaches its students how to pray in mosques. The activity is supposedly part of the curriculum and has been recorded on video and captured in photos that have been going viral.
The students visited the Ghulzar e Madina mosque, located in Zwolle in Holland, to learn about Islam culture and tradition. An Imam, which is the term for the leader of the mosque, was seen in the video talking to the students and subsequently teaching them how to pray. Their teachers are also seen in the video watching the kids with smiles on their faces.
Daily Mail reports that the mosque is known to have been frequented by radical Muslim preachers like M Anas Noorani Siddiqui. The said school trip to the mosque happened a few years ago but the video recently surfaced on the internet.
The news outlet further reports that Freedom Party MP Harm Beertema got wind of the viral video and has appealed to parents of the students to disallow their children from participating in such an activity in the future. Describing the mosque visit as an "away-with-our-culture excursions," the MP said that ultimately the decision to join should lie on the parents.
But Americans have used the viral video and its screenshots for a different political agenda altogether. On social media, cropped photos of the video have been shared as a propaganda against Common Core.
But Snopes has debunked the false information, citing that it is actually from the Netherlands and it was about teaching the children about other cultures. "All questions that the students had were answered in a fun and understandable way," the report stated.
According to Gatestone Insititute, the Netherlands has one of the largest Muslim population among European countries at 925,000 as of 2013. Mosque visits from non-Islam students and even other visitors happen regularly.
