Mufti Saab of the Blackburn Darul Uloom granted his students a 3-day weekend to watch the UEFA Euro final after a video of them celebrating England’s win in the semifinal went viral on Wednesday.
The video of the students watching the match on a laptop was first posted by former BBC and Aljazeera journalist Hasan Patel on Twitter.
The video received a lot of attention on Twitter, with many showing joy and respect to the children for enjoying their country’s big win.
Since going viral, Patel posted an update about how they've gotten the long weekend to watch the final with their family.
Many people took to social media to say how the video of the students at Blackburn Darul Uloom celebrating England's win showed the country's diversity and dispelled stereotypes about madrassa students.
“The whole country regardless of what community, religion, race etc uniting behind our football team, it doesn’t get much better than that,” wrote a Twitter user.
“This is also England,” wrote another.
“Love to see this sort of stuff, just wish the media would promote this sort of positivity,” stated a tweet.
Football manager Charlie Tango also remembered his visit to the Madrassa, expressing his joy of watching the students celebrate.
British Barrister David Anderson revealed that the video was not surprising, and that “there’s a lot of decency in this country still.”
Many Twitter users also demanded that the children get a bigger screen to watch the final on.
According to Lancashire Telegraph, Former Blackburn mayor Salim Mulla stated that “[the video] proves a lot of people wrong and all those people who have been writing things to divide us.”
In March 2020, the Lancashire Telegraph also covered a trip of the students of Madrasah Zeenatul Quran got to the Blackburn Rovers' football ground. The children experienced “pitch, players' changing room, press room, dugout, boardroom and saw trophies,” according to the newspaper.