THERE is no-one quite so sure she is absolutely, unquestionably right than a seven-year-old girl. Their general intransigence would break most professional interrogators; you just cannot win an argument with them. Until, that is, they get bored, forg
et what they were so insistent on and end up switching their position, leaving everyone else half-convinced and completely confused. It is not good to discuss religion with them, as they tend to see things only in black and white (and possibly pink). This is hard luck if you happen to be related to one or making a documentary such as Revelations: Muslim School, about two pupils at the Nottingham Islamia.
"We don't want to go to the hellfire, do we!" said the adorable Zara, grinning toothily in her hijab. She was a little zealot, whose religious lessons had hardened into a strict moral code that she was as determined to enforce as some little girls are not to eat Brussels sprouts.
The fact that her mum and teenage sister, who went to a state school, didn't wear hijab, which was against her rules, was deeply annoying to Zara. Even when Aieza experimented with covering her hair for Ramadan, Zara's small, cute face gave a threatening glare that could frighten a gangster, declaring that no, she didn't look nice.
"What about me, then?" asked the film's director, Tanya Stephan, off-camera. "Can I go to Paradise?" "You're a good woman, aren't you?" asked Zara sternly. "You don't swear. Um … you're, um, a different religion so you don't have to wear hijab, you can still go to Paradise."
None of this was really about Islam so much as the perennial attraction of dogma which reassuringly leaves no room for awkward doubts, particularly for people finding their way in life. The school, which teaches regular subjects alongside Islamic-style RE, didn't seem to have encouraged it any more than any religion aims to indoctrinate its young. It was just a stage and once her mum challenged her on it, even Zara conceded that, perhaps, someone could not wear the hijab and still be good. Yet the fact that she had taken her lessons so seriously was partly what her parents had been hoping for by sending her there.
Showing the very ordinariness of the Islamia school, which costs £1,800 a year, was presumably intended to counter the lurid fears whipped up by the likes of the BNP about such places being hives of propaganda. But it didn't make for a very interesting documentary. The background of the school and its devout teachers working for low pay wasn't explored, just the experiences of two girls. While Zara was from a traditionally Muslim family, 12-year-old Aysha had converted when her mother married a Pakistani man. She'd been bullied a bit previously for being Muslim; at first in the school she was left out of things for being white. But they intervened and it was all sorted out, leaving Aysha quite content – which was nice, but again, not that gripping to watch.
Inconsequential but more entertaining was Friday's short documentary UR S0 V4IN, in which director Ellena Wood found no fewer than four Nigels who all coveted the N1GEL personalised plate for their cars. Only one – Nigel Mills, a retired satellite engineer – could get it, paying almost £80,000 so the others had to settle for N2GEL, AU1 (from Goldfinger's car) and, after a battle with the DVLA, the charming BLO3 JOB. The mysterious appeal of these status symbols is still lost on me, but I did wonder who out there has the licence plate CLU L3SS.
