At 8.45am, the day after the United States started bombing Afghanistan, Belle Vue girls’ school in Bradford held a two-minute silence “to think about peace, about people who were affected and about people who were frightened”, says headteacher Chrissy Williams. “We had already done something for those in the US, and believed it was important that we also recognised this.”

Staff knew, too, that it was vital they quickly established the tone of the school’s response to the US and British military action. “Pupils were pleased we’d done it without them having to ask,” says the head. “It’s important, because once 1,000 girls have the bit between their teeth, it’s difficult to turn them around.”

Throughout the United Kingdom - and despite Tony Blair’s insistence that this is not a war against Islam - British Muslims are trying to reconcile their nationality with their empathy for their co-religionists in other countries. This sometimes painful process is nowhere more visible than in Bradford; the city has a 20 per cent and growing ethnic minority population - higher among under-18s - and as the former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, Sir Herman Ouseley, made clear in a report for the council last summer, some schools are sharply polarised by race and religion.

Favoured by Asian families wanting single-sex education, Belle Vue girls has 98 per cent Muslim pupils. “This school is effectively monocultural,” acknowledges the head. “It’s sad that the girls don’t get the exposure to a range of cultures and religions.” The 30-plus white girls in the school “rub along” with the majority, she says, and staff make every effort to broaden everyone’s horizons through school trips and projects.

Belle Vue girls are proud of their new, light-filled maths and technology block - built, at a cost of pound;3.5 million, in the wake of riots in the city in 1995, which eventually brought in funds to run-down, inner-city schools. The school has a lively, sociable atmosphere, but not at the expense of academic achievement: this year 28 per cent of GCSE entrants got five A-C grades, and last year more than 40 girls from the thriving sixth form went on to university. But the school, and others like it, is carrying on important work of culture and identity, unmeasured by pen and paper tests, and for which no blueprint exists.

Most of Belle Vue’s pupils were born in Britain; increasingly, their parents were too. Links with the Mirpur region of Pakistan remain strong though, and English is still usually a second language, after Punjabi and Urdu. A small number of pupils - around 40 - are Bengali speakers. “Many of our girls are second or third-generation,” says the headteacher. “We are failing if they can’t by now say that they are British.” And can they? She sighs. “I think they’re going to feel very torn about it.”

Belle Vue has strongly emphasised literacy for several years, as many pupils are disadvantaged by a lack of formal language skills. They feel disadvantaged, too, by the marginalisation of their religion, especially since September 11. A group of sixth-formers - some in traditional headscarf, some in jeans, all articulate - are vehement in their protestations that as Muslims they have been first ignored then vilified, mainly by the media.

“The way people look at you,” says Shanaz Younis, 17, “that stereotypical view they have makes you feel ashamed to be an Asian - you need to fight against that.”

“Nobody values the lives of people starving in Afghanistan the way they value the lives of Americans,” says 17-year-old Sofia Ashraf. “But we sympathise with the victims in America. People might agree with some of Bin Laden’s beliefs and the cause, but not the way he goes about it.”

Staff here - around a dozen of whom are from Asian backgrounds - walk a tightrope between acknowledging the girls’ interest in the situation and thoughts on the issues, and maintaining school as a neutral arena.

“We’ve had to be careful,” says Chrissy Williams. “School is quite different from home, and when they come here they’re leaving a lot of the politics behind. For many, this is a quiet, secure place.” She turned down a request by a group of older girls that they be allowed to invite an imam to deliver the Muslim perspective on the New York attacks. “You can describe it as ducking the issues,” she says, “but our job is to educate them.”

After race riots flared again in Bradford last summer - instigated by the far right and fuelled, say locals, by outsiders - there are bruised feelings here. Young Asian men feel they are indiscriminately tarred with the rioter brush and some white people feel disliked for their colour. The Manningham corner, where the torched BMW showroom stood, now lies empty and fenced off. “Why did they burn buildings?” asks an Asian taxi driver. “Buildings done nothing.”

Relations in the city had improved since the summer but recent events have opened fresh wounds. The leader of the Council of Mosques, Sher Azam, reports that some families are keeping their children away from the mosque for fear of attacks. Martin Baines, a police community relations officer, acknowledges the tensions, particularly among young men. “We see young people who are dysfunctional within their own community, dysfunctional within mainstream community and dysfunctional with their peers. We have to look at the make-up of our schools, and what impact that’s going to have on the future,” he says.

Whether they are mixed, mainly Muslim or mainly white, all schools in Bradford face the issue of promoting understanding among young people. “Admission policies and catchments have failed to bring about mixing, sharing and integrating.” says Sir Herman. “Instead, they have encouraged segregation and separation. Raceethnicity is an issue of real concern for schools that are predominantly of one ethnic or monocultural composition.”

It’s a point not lost on the Church of England. Two days before the bombing raids on Afghanistan began, the Archbishop of York, David Hope, was in Bradford to open the new Immanuel C of E community college. His sermon returned repeatedly to the “large and complex issues” facing the new school and posited a “welcoming and joyful inclusion of those of other faiths”. This, he said, was “no mere aspiration but an imperative”.

Church leaders’ sincerity on the point is not in question. But the question of how to desegregate Bradford’s schools (not all of which are monocultural) is a tricky one. Immanuel, which has taken over a pupil body from a nearby comp - now closed - and added a Year 7 of its own, is almost entirely white.

“Geography makes us look as if we’re a school for whites only,” says Alan Hall, Immanuel’s headteacher. “It’s incumbent on a school like this to encourage more Asian families, but to be inclusive we will have to be pro-active.” Governors here are considering an admissions policy to give a percentage of places to feeder church primaries in the inner city - where pupils are mainly Asian. Meanwhile, there is only one long, black plait among the rows of childish heads listening to the archbishop. While some pupils have friends from other cultures outside school, others don’t. Does 14-year-old Barbara have any Muslim friends? “Not that I know of,” she says.

While Bradford’s Asian communities cluster in the inner city, better-off families - mainly white - have moved further out. “White flight has created the situation here in Bradford, not the Asian community,” says Bruce Berry, head for the past nine years of Belle Vue boys, with 500 pupils, almost all Asian Muslim. He is pragmatic about the situation. “The children who walk through the door are the children we educate. It’s a school built on total respect; we show each other tender loving care.”

Bruce Berry and his staff try to introduce pupils to other communities and cultures, visiting a local church and taking boys out on trips and activities. His sixth-formers visited a local primary following the terrorist attacks on New York; younger pupils there had been taking up race-based positions in the playground. Belle Vue sixth-formers told them:

“We’re all Bradford people, we have to live together, look after each other and understand that there are no differences between us.”

But these boys feel their isolation. “We don’t get to see many different types of people,” says 17-year-old Ummar Hanif. “And my parents would say about university, ‘Let’s hope it’s local and you can return at the end of the day.’ (Ummar has 13 GCSEs.) Asian parents provide a secure environment for their children; it’s not like white lads, who have to stand on their own two feet.”

Yet experiences when they venture further afield are not always positive. Nissar Khan, 17, had been in the city centre with friends the previous Saturday afternoon. He pulls up his sleeve to display a wound. “I was just standing there and a white lad with a pen knife came and stabbed me, and ran off.”

After the riots in the city earlier in the summer, the boys went on a residential trip to Leeds, organised by the school. “When we said we were from Bradford, there were some very repulsive facial expressions,” says Ummar. They have been warned by their parents not to sever all contacts with the country and culture of their forebears. “My father says we shouldn’t be completely free of our roots. Maybe a time will come when we’re going to have large-scale trouble, maybe be driven out,” says Ummar. “I don’t always feel comfortable in Bradford,” says Abbas Akhlaq, 17.

Two years ago, Bradford reorganised its schools, dispensing with middle schools and introducing a two-tier system. The local education authority has been partly privatised, with a company called Serco now running support services. If Serco has any ideas about how to tackle segregation, it is keeping quiet about them. “We have to operate within the rules that govern parental choice,” says Peter Roycroft of Education Bradford. “We have strategies designed to make the learning environment as beneficial as possible to the learners.”

One school that represents the city’s population on a quota basis is Dixons city technology college. Its college-style atmosphere is in line with that in other CTCs, as is the Legoland architecture. The view - of tower blocks, disused industrial chimneys and rounded moorland, sums up Bradford. Here, multiculturalism has been achieved through “sheer hard work and common sense”, says deputy principal Hilary Temple. The college has equal numbers of girls and boys and must mirror the ability range and the ethnic composition of the city; they select 160 children from (last year) 700 applicants. Selection is through tests set and administered by the National Foundation for Educational Research, and two days of interviewing by staff.

“We deal with people as individuals,” says Ms Temple. “We’ll be watching the poor, white, inner-city boys and girls just as much as any others. We don’t let cliques develop.”

Children come in ones and twos from 60 primary schools, and seem, to some extent, to have been de-cultured on entry to prepare them for life at Dixons. Extended visits to Pakistan are frowned on, although there is a classroom allocated for prayer and Muslim pupils are granted leave of absence for Eid.

Primary schools in Bradford are less likely than secondaries to be monocultural. But Atlas community primary, in Manningham, is all-Asian. In the nursery, they’re making chapattis; in assembly, children wear the school’s green uniform, some in shalwar kameez, some not. “We have to be sensitive to many issues,” says headteacher Beryl Powell, here for the past five years and chair of the local primary heads’ association. “Some parents will not allow theatre, full stop. Others won’t allow children to sing or perform during Ramadan. We just have to take what they say. It often depends on which mosque they attend.”

Staff here have been uneasy since the September 11 attacks, which came soon after a weekend when the school was seriously vandalised. Since September 11, Beryl Powell has aimed for a low-key response in school. “Because of the sensitivities and the age of the children, we’ve kept the lid on it,” she says. “I told the staff to allow children to talk if they had things to say. In my assembly, I talked about people being brave in disasters, but didn’t sensationalise it. The children think a few people died; they can’t imagine the enormity.”

She’s had to crack down on children chanting “Taliban” in the playground, and has had discussions with Muslim staff about how to deal with the issues. “I think most would feel we’d dealt with it in the right way. Your political or sexual affiliation is your own; it’s not a school issue.” She fears the repercussions of the war against terrorism that has now been unleashed. “Some of us are concerned about what will happen. Our kids might be turned against Christians. We can do without it.”

Fighting mistrust

Naila Zaffar has been head of the 450-pupil Copthorne primary school in inner-city Bradford for nine years and is a government-appointed member of the General Teaching Council. A Muslim of east African origin, she is well equipped to talk to pupils about recent events in and beyond their city. She has relatives in Peshawar and is experiencing the same concern as many local families.

Almost all of the children at Copthorne are Muslim, although not all are of Pakistani descent. Situated near Bradford University, the school also caters for the children of PhD students from Malaysia, Egypt, Singapore and other countries.

“Before the riots in July, children were saying they had been told by their parents and in the mosques that Christians were coming to kill Muslims,” says Naila. “We had to explain that it was not Christians and Muslims but a group of young white boys coming to pick a fight and some of our boys getting involved. Children were frightened - it was Year 2 saying this - but they listened and they understood.

“After the attacks on September 11, children in Years 5 and 6 were talking about it. Again it came down to: is it a MuslimChristian war? That is the message they sometimes get from home and the mosque. Our role is to say that it’s not that, and to explain to them about terrorism.

“But many of our parents are from the border region of Pakistan, and have relatives there. Since the bombing began, children are asking, ‘Why are they attacking Afghanistan? Is it because they are Muslims?’ We keep on talking to our children, explaining that this is not a war against Islam.

“The fact that I’m a Muslim does help to establish trust. But, generally, staff know parents and parents know staff. They know, ‘These are the good people, who come and teach our children. If they have the strength to work here, surely they are dedicated.’ ”

Naila Zaffar’s recommended resources

Key stage 1

My Muslim Faith (pound;4.50). What Do We Say: a Guide to Islamic Manners (pound;4.75).

Key stage 23

Islam for Children (pound;4.75). Tell Me About the prophet Muhammad (pound;11.25)

Key stage 34

Islam: Beliefs amp; Teachings (pound;6.25); A is for Allah (pound;7.25)

Videos

Adam’s World (12 titles, including Prayer, Festivals, Songs, pound;12.75 each). Suitable for three to nine-year-olds; uses a Sesame Street-type format, with a mixture of documentary and music.

CD-Roms

Secondary

The Alim (pound;60); The Islamic Scholar (pound;70)

All prices include postage and packing. Available from: Multicultural Book Services, Unit 33, Carlisle Business Centre, 60 Carlisle Rd, Bradford BD8 8BD. Tel: Aamir Darr on 01274 544158