LONDON — Britain is funding a curriculum aimed at teaching children in Muslim religious schools how to steer clear of extremism, but some of the lessons are worrying Muslim educators.

One lesson plan goes something like this: A group of Islamic extremists want to buy fertilizer that could be used to make a bomb. Should the shopkeeper sell it to them? Or take Ahmad, whose friends want to attack a local supermarket in retaliation for the war in Iraq. Is it right for Ahmad to harm innocent Britons because their government invaded a Muslim country?

The curriculum’s answer in both cases is no, but the fact that these scenarios are being considered at all has prompted concern among Muslim teachers, who question whether they are appropriate for young students.

Some also feel insulted that the program appears to make the assumption that the religious schools — or, madrassas — are teeming with budding terrorists.

“In an educational setting, those propositions are a bit stark,” the chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain’s education committee, Tahir Alam, said.

The British government acknowledged that the curriculum raised sensitive issues, but said they were needed to give Muslims the practical skills required to reject extremism.

“The project ensures that young Muslim students learn the true teachings of Islam,” a spokeswoman for the Department of Communities and Local Government said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

“There will be difficult issues and scenarios to discuss — but it would be wrong to shy away from them,” she said.

Ten Muslim clerics have been teaching the lessons in six madrassas and a school in Bradford — a religiously diverse city about 200 miles north of London. About 500 students have already completed the course, versions of which the communities department hopes to roll out nationally to some of Britain’s 100,000 madrassa students.

The project, called “Nasiha,” or “guidance,” draws on the Koran, Shariah law, and traditional Muslim scholarship to show that British laws are in harmony with Islamic values. Its lessons will be taught in madrassas, which in Britain are usually unregulated after-school programs based in mosques or private homes.

The stated objective is to teach children, most between the ages of eight and 14, “to realize that to harm or terrorize citizens in the UK is not something permitted in Islam,” and “to be able to identify individuals or groups who preach hatred and learn ways of avoiding them.”

While some of the lessons cover day-to-day situations such as bullying or good manners, others are explicitly aimed at defusing Muslims anger over the war in Iraq.

Teachers are asked to remind their students that some of their schoolmates may be in the military, and that as citizens “they should take an active role for their safe return in what many may consider an unjust war.”

A homework assignment asks students to list “some of the peaceful things you can do to show you are not happy about your country going to war.”

One counterterrorism expert had mixed feelings about the project. “One lesson from school is not going to change fundamental attitudes,” the director of the Center for Defense Studies at King’s College, London, Peter Neumann, said.