Dear colleagues,
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh; and Bismillahhir rahmanir Rahim.
Good news!
AMS met with the Home Office in February 2022, to lobby them on your behalf about providing support to Muslim Faith Schools to protect them from possible hate crime and the adverse effect that it can have on the education and well-being of children. Nationally, there has been an increase in hate crime incidents happening at places of worship, associated faith community centers and faith schools. Amongst many things, we specifically asked that they support security infrastructure including improving perimeter security and access control.
Alhamdulillah, the Home Office has listened to our case and have developed a scheme to help Muslim Faith Schools. Through this scheme, Muslim Faith Schools (independent and state-funded) will be able to claim for protective security measures, such as CCTV, secure fencing, and intruder alarms to be installed at their site for free. AMS lobbied and offered to launch, administer and implement the scheme on behalf of the Home Office to avoid an application process and ensure every Muslim school benefitted. However, Home Office have decided not take up our offer, which is their prerogative.
Instead, Home Office will be writing to all Muslim Faith Schools in the next few weeks to provide details of the scheme and how you could claim. The scheme has already been trailed in the recent Home Office announcement for security funding for mosques which said “…the government is introducing a new scheme for Muslim faith schools to provide additional protection that will be rolled out later in the year.”
We believe this is a good development and encourage all our Muslim schools to participate in the scheme when they receive their letter/email from the Home Office.
If any of you need any help or support in making a claim please do not hesitate to contact AMS on admin@ams-uk.org As always, AMS stands ready to support in whatever way we can. Insha-Allah.
Your humble, servant”
Ghulam Abbas
Director of Strategic Engagement