And yes, unsurprisingly, this is another story from the Emirate of Tower Hamlets.
A 5-year-old Christian girl in the U.K. was allegedly forcefully separated from her family and placed with Muslim foster parents who don’t speak English.
The Tower Hamlets borough placed the girl, an English-speaking U.K. native, in foster care with two Muslim families for the past six months, according to a Monday report from The Times. Confidential local authority reports said the child was extremely distressed. The girl reportedly sobbed and begged not to be taken back to her foster parents because “they don’t speak English,” and said that her foster mother took away her Christian cross necklace, told her to learn Arabic, and refused to let her eat bacon.
“This is a five-year-old white girl. She was born in this country, speaks English as her first language, loves football, holds a British passport and was christened in a church,” a friend of the child’s biological family told The Times. “She’s already suffered the huge trauma of being forcibly separated from her family. She needs surroundings in which she’ll feel secure and loved. Instead, she’s trapped in a world where everything feels foreign and unfamiliar. That’s really scary for a young child.”
The mother in the first family reportedly wore a niqab, a garment which covers the whole body except for he eyes, outside the home, while the mother in the child’s current foster family wears a burka, which conceals everything, including the eyes. The niqab and the burka typically signify fundamentalist Salafi Islam, an interpretation of Islam that rejects Western culture and values.
The girl allegedly told her biological mother at a recent visit that “Christmas and Easter are stupid,” and that “European women are stupid and alcoholic.”
A British foster family could have been found. But it is the Emirate of Tower Hamlets. And given a few years, there would have been a "family vacation" from which the girl never returned. And a Bangladeshi clan in Tower Hamlets would have had a new Mercedes. And that's the best case scenario. The Islamic sex grooming scandals provide plenty of fodder for worst case scenarios.
But an investigation has been launched.
Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee, urged the Government to examine the case and establish whether the issue was widespread within the foster care system.
He said the child should ‘have the right to be placed with people who reflect her heritage and background’.
Philip Hollobone, Tory MP for Kettering, said: ‘What if it were a Muslim girl being looked after by a Christian couple and they insisted she deny her Muslim upbringing and become a Christian – how would the Muslim community feel about that?
‘It seems to me the original heritage of the child ought to be respected by the foster family, whatever their own faith happens to be. The council needs to review this case urgently … All religions should be treated equally and respected in the same way.’
Indeed. But some are more equals than others.