Bradford school governors ‘promoted Islamic agenda’

 

 

The BBC has started its own Islamophobic witch hunt….and hints that the Trojan Horse letter might not be fake after all:

Bradford school governors ‘promoted Islamic agenda’

 

After having spent such a long time firstly ignoring the Trojan Horse allegations, then downplaying them, the BBC has jumped aboard the bandwagon with allacrity and is banging out a new tune with the vigour of the converted, hunting out Islamic cultural colonisation in Bradford despite that ‘Ofsted and Bradford Metropolitan District Council say no schools in Bradford are currently being investigated in relation to Trojan Horse.’

‘Teachers in Bradford have reported instances of governors promoting a more Islamic ethos, the BBC has learned’

 

I like this excuse from the governors:

The chairman of the governors rejected claims of an Islamic agenda, saying his aim was to meet community needs.

‘Meeting community needs’?…..that could excuse all sorts of sins couldn’t it…Honour killings?  Just meeting ‘community needs’…and so on.

 

The BBC has seen documents which may suggest an attempt to bring an Islamic agenda into the classroom at Carlton Bolling, a state secondary school with a largely Muslim governing body.

The chairman of the governors at Carlton Bolling College, Faisal Khan – an independent local councillor formerly of the Respect party – said his aim was to improve academic standards and meet the needs of the communities the school served.

“At the end of the day we have a school that has 90-95% Muslim children, we meet their needs – whether it is halal food, whether it is prayer within school [or] wearing the hijab.

“We don’t want children – irrespective of their background – to compromise on their faith.”

He was meeting “the sensitivities of parents”.

 

Note Faisal Khan…once of the Respect Party as was Salma Yaqoob who was from the very area of Birmingham that the Trojan Horse allegations first arose..and which she refuted vigorously on the Today programme…small world eh?

 

The BBC here makes claims of school governors driving out heads who oppose their Islamising agenda…just like the Trojan Horse allegations then:

Confidential documents seen by the BBC reveal head teacher Chris Robinson resigned from her position in 2012 because she felt her reputation, integrity and leadership were being questioned by governors.

Nick Weller, a head teacher in Bradford and chief executive of the Bradford Partnership, believes Ms Robinson was unfairly driven out by the governing body.

“I think an excellent, outstanding head teacher has been driven out by a governing body because she would not give in to their agenda of making it reflect the culture and traditions of the Muslim students, more than it did, or more than is right and proper for a state-funded school.

“There’s a co-ordinated attempt by a small group of unrepresentative people, whose views are not shared by most of the Muslim parents that I talk to, to gain greater control of governing bodies in Bradford and advance their agenda.”

 

The BBC goes on:

Mr Khan was also a governor at another Bradford school, Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College, where the governing body was sacked en masse in April and replaced with an interim executive board.

It followed an Ofsted inspection that concluded relationships between governors, school staff and the local authority had deteriorated markedly; actions by the governing body were increasingly undermining senior leaders; and governors were becoming too involved in operational matters.

 

 

This is interesting…the BBC has long painted the Trojan Horse letter as a fake but here it suggests that it might have some substance:

The so-called Trojan Horse document names Bradford as a city in which a Muslim takeover of schools could be co-ordinated.

“This is a long-term plan and one which we are sure will lead to great success in taking over a number of schools and ensuring they are run on strict Islamic principles,” the document, which has not been authenticated, states.

 

Here the BBC reports of the response of local politicians:

The local MP in Bradford, David Ward, said: “We cannot allow the situation that has developed in Birmingham, where it has spread to many more schools than are currently affected in Bradford.

“It really needs to be dealt with before it gets out of hand.”

Bradford Metropolitan District Council said it was ready to act quickly in any case where there was concern about relationships between head teachers and governors.

 

So here the BBC are proactively seeking out the story and taking the allegations seriously….all welcome but a bit of a turn around from its initial response to the Birmingham allegations and the repeated assertion that the letter was fake….but at odds with the likes of Mark Easton and Chris Cook’s ongoing analysis.

 

 

Now That’s What I Call Journalism

 

One of the major problems with the BBC’s reporting of the ‘Trojan Horse’ story has been the failure to provide historical context, a lack of reference material that allows you to judge current events and put them in perspective, the lack of crucial information about people, their actions and beliefs, and finally a lack of a coherent analysis that ties all that together to bring the audience a genuine and informative picture of events….one look at Panorama’s film about Islamic extremism in schools in 2010 would have confirmed a lot about the Trojan Horse allegations and answered questions about whether or not Gove knew about, and was tackling, extremism in schools….which you might suspect is why the BBC seemed to have ‘forgotten’ that past film of theirs and not used it to judge events now.

 

Today though at least one BBC journalist showed what can be done, how it should be done, giving a clear, unprejudiced analysis of events leading up to a current political storm in a teacup.

The head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, claimed Michael Gove had previously rejected the idea of snap inspections of schools.

The BBC were revving up to make this a big story, it leading the news bulletins…but John Mannell on World at One (10 mins 50 sec) scotched that attempt by digging back through the archives and coming up with material and an analysis that suggests Gove is, once again, innocent of the charges laid against him.

All good stuff, clearly and simply presented.

However Emily Maitliss undoes the good work and manages to mangle the story by doing the usual BBC thing of adding in her own opinions and suggestive words and phrases that have little bearing on the truth and seems to relish sprinkling a little vitriol and doubt over things.

Personally I’d prefer the unadorned truth as provided by John Mannell.

 

 

 

 

Nicky Campbell’s Phrase & Fable

 

Nicky Campbell’s phone-in today discussed ‘British values’:

The education secretary Michael Gove says he wants to put them at the heart of what every school in England delivers — but what are they, and how do we make sure our kids are learning them?

 

Now Nicky tries hard to be impartial but as always his inner Liberal always breaks loose and rampages around, quietly in a nice middle class way trying to be lovely and tolerant to one and all without condemning anyone for anything.

 

Talking about the hijacking of secular schools by hardline Muslims who wish to impose Islamic values upon those schools he tells us, as he did yesterday, that this is not a Muslim/non-Muslim issue.

But it is precisely that.  British/western/democratic/secular values versus Islamic ones.

He then claims that no one knows what British values are…in fact just listened to 5Live Drive and they peddle the same line.

Of course that’s nonsense….but a simple way to deal with that vascillitude is to say what is unacceptable……here is the extremism defintion of unacceptable views: ‘The government defines extremism as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.’

You might ask if that isn’t just a definition of Islam and therefore is Islam itself ‘extreme’ in the context of a western, secular, progressive democracy?  That question might be backed up with asking if it is unacceptable to promote the view that women are second class citizens, that gays should be killed, that people who want to leave a religion can be killed, that unbelievers are unclean and immoral and can also be killed.

 

He then tells us that the real problem is intolerance of intolerance.

So…it is people being intolerant of clerical fascism that are the problem in Nicky’s view and not those who would impose a medieval religious regime upon us?

 

I think the problem is too much tolerance of intolerance….Nicky Campbell and the BBC being at the forefront of that way of relativising everything and never condemning anything….except the Tories and UKIP of course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Take Back Our Children’

‘WARNING TO ALL MUSLIM PARENTS

OUR MUSLIM CHILDREN WILL LEARN AND PICK UP HOMOSEXUALITY IN SCHOOLS TODAY BECAUSE OF THE FORCED INDOCTRINATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY BY OFSTED’

 

‘It is astonishing that a Labour government has managed to lead the country into this religious quagmire.’  Polly Toynbee

 

A large download of information regarding faith schools, of all faiths, and the consequences of their ever growing presence….starting from a very biased promotion of Muslim faith schools by Mark Easton and the downplaying of the hijacking of secular schools by extremists…..there’s lots to read and chew over…. but try and read it all….it tells you that opposition to faith schools is not just about Muslim schools…so no Islamophobic  ‘witch hunt’, and that Labour played a huge role in creating this mess…for instance it allowed Muslim and evangelical schools in 2008 to opt out of Ofsted inspections…..you might ask how you don’t hear such things on the BBC in relation to the recent revelations (especially as it was revealed in a BBC Panorama programme in 2009 and 2010…can they really have forgotten?)….or how the direct evidence of a ‘Trojan Horse’ plot that Andrew Gilligan reports in detail is ignored by the BBC.

 

The BBC instead of standing back and reporting events has decided to try and change the course of events with the likes of Phil Mackie, Chris Cook and Mark Easton providing a rather unusual and personal view of those events not completely at one with the facts.

You might want to know if there is any substance to the ‘Trojan Horse’ claims….there isn’t according to these three.  You might want to know if it is merely an anti-Muslim thing as suggested so often….but you won’t get any reference to opposition to Christian faith schools in relation to this story.  You might want to know what part Labour played in creating this debacle when Tristram Hunt et al are constantly in the BBC studios…but again little to no reference is made to past sins of Labour in the run up to an election.

There is plenty of that ‘unusual and personal’ analysis but no nuance, context or history.  For the BBC the job is to playdown any idea of Muslims hijacking state sector secular schools whilst conversely playing up the government’s part in recklessly ignoring that ..er…’non-existent’ threat.

 

An interesting day yesterday watching the BBC negotiate the tricky revelations about the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair.

All morning we were assured that there was nothing to be concerned about, Nicky Campbell even telling us that this wasn’t a Muslim/non-Muslim issue…his message being that perhaps a school would always take on the ethos of the parents and if you get good exam results maybe that’s acceptable.

The hapless Phil Mackie came on to tell us that the Trojan Horse allegations were somewhat exaggerated…perhaps coming from disgruntled staff who weren’t up to the job.

That’ll be like headmaster Tim Boyle who raised the alarm in 2010 and whose warnings the BBC based its criticisms of Gove upon for apparently not taking them seriously (though he might have…read on)…..or the headmistress of the ‘outstanding’ Park View School who has been forced out by Tahir Alam….

‘Outstanding’ head teacher allegedly targeted by Muslim radicals confirms that she’s retiring

Lindsey Clark, the respected executive head of Park View, one of the Birmingham schools targeted in the alleged “Trojan Horse” plot by Muslim radicals, has confirmed that she is to retire. She becomes the fifth non-Muslim headteacher to leave one of the schools linked to the plot over the last six months. The others are Balwant Bains (Saltley), Tina Ireland (Regent’s Park), Bhupinder Kondal (Oldknow),  and Peter Slough (Small Heath). A sixth head, Golden Hillock’s Matthew Scarrott, left a little earlier.
As I have described, the replacement of secular, non-Muslim heads has been a key goal of the radicals leading the campaign.
Mrs Clark told Ofsted inspectors probing her school last month that she had been marginalised by Tahir Alam, the hardline chair of governors at Park View, and the school’s principal, effectively its number two, Mohammed “Moz” Hussain.

 

The Tahir Alam who has suddenly disappeared and left the PR to the only non-Muslim governor of the school.

 

 

After all the downplaying the BBC finally had to admit that there was more to this than they had previously liked to say:

“A culture of fear and intimidation has taken grip” in Birmingham schools caught up in the Trojan Horse claims, says Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw.
Head teachers have been “marginalised or forced out of their jobs”, said Sir Michael, as he delivered his findings on claims of hardline Muslim takeovers.
The Ofsted chief said there was evidence of an “organised campaign to target certain schools”.
Sir Michael’s conclusion is that there had been deliberate attempts to change the ethos of schools – and he has made recommendations, including the use of “professional governors”, to the Education Secretary Michael Gove, who will respond later on Monday.
“Some of our findings are deeply worrying and, in some ways, quite shocking,” says the Ofsted chief

Coincidentally on the same day this happened:

Ofsted has issued grave concerns over a Luton Islamic faith school found to have books which “promotes and condones” stoning, lashing and execution.
The Department for Education ordered Ofsted to carry out an emergency inspection of Olive Tree Primary School beginning May 13, but inspectors were forced to leave the school after parents became enraged over questions posed to nine-year-old students surrounding homosexuality.
During the visit the DfE asked inspectors to “pay particular attention to the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils.”
The schools watchdog has now said, in a report published on Monday, that it found literature in Olive Tree’s library which has “no place in British society” and “does not support pupils’ development for life in modern Britain”.

One problem with the BBC is a disconnect between its factual reporting and its analysis and comment/interpretation by people like Mark Easton who have their own agendas.

Despite “A culture of fear and intimidation has taken grip” and an “organised campaign to target certain schools” and “Some of our findings are deeply worrying and, in some ways, quite shocking,” says the Ofsted chief  the BBC’s Mark Easton steps in to offer us his interpretation…and that’s all it is because facts are few and far between or ignored or distorted…although he mentioned the schools were not faith schools he continually gave  the impression that they were in fact faith schools and perhaps should be considered no differently to Catholic faith schools:

‘Trojan horse’ scandal – extreme or diverse?

What there may well have been is an attempt by some conservative Muslims to encourage an ethos within Birmingham schools that is true to their religious tradition. But is that very different from Michael Gove’s encouragement of parents in Catholic academies to be true to their religious tradition?
If, like 629 other state-funded English secondaries, Park View had been allowed to become a faith school, then one presumes the Islamic ethos would no longer be regarded as a threat to the welfare of the pupils. Conservative Muslims would be no different from conservative Catholics looking to escape from moral and cultural relativism.

The BBC’s Chris Cook took a similar approach peddling the line that if the parents want faith schools then that might be the best solution:  ‘Once you accept that certain schools are Islamic schools, you can then think about constructing a governing body with proper representation and management processes to prevent the problems in Birmingham.

 

Andrew Gilligan examines the Guardian’s coverage of this story and there is a distinct similarity between their coverage and the BBC’s:

Trojan Horse: how The Guardian ignored and misrepresented evidence of Islamism in schools

[The Guardian journalist has] done more than that – he’s ignored evidence, or misrepresented it as “crumbling” if it doesn’t fit his version of events. That’s not just bad journalism, but a betrayal of the liberal and progressive values The Guardian is supposed to fight for.

 

 

Are Easton and Cook right?  Just how good are faith schools and is there a difference between Christian and Muslim ones? Do they sow divison and distrust and what are the consequences of segregation?
Muslim parent: Radical school is brainwashing our children

Mohammed Zabar, whose daughter attends Oldknow Academy, has spoken out after the head, Bhupinder Kondal, was driven out

And in 2010 Gilligan reports this:

Extremist Muslim schools: Islamism’s most worrying manifestation of all

I’ve just finished watching John Ware’s excellent BBC Panorama about what’s being taught in some Muslim schools: a subject which I, and others, believe is the single most worrying aspect of Islamist and radical activity in Britain.
At present the vast majority of British Muslims have little or no truck with Islamist ideas. But in some Muslim schools – not in all, but in a significant and growing number – a new generation is being raised to be much more radical than its parents.
The BBC’s film is another encouraging sign of the growing pressure under which Islamism now finds itself.

 

The BBC’s Panorama takes a look at faith schools in 2010 and tells us that the government is working on a programme to prevent radicalisation in schools….so does that indicate Gove did react to Tim Boyle’s concerns?

 

In 2009 Panorama looked at the issue of fundamentalist Islam in the UK…Panorama asks whether we should isolate or talk to the radicals…..The question has split those who work in counter terrorism

Note that…in 2009 how to tackle extremism was already a divisive issue in government….so Gove V’s May is nothing new…Labour were falling out themselves…finally coming down on the side that GOve took…wanting to tackle those who preach against democracy and British values:


BBC Panorama – Muslim First British Second

From 2009:
‘We want to move away from just challenging violent extremism. We now believe that we should challenge people who are against democracy and state institutions.’

The UK government is preparing a major shift in its counter-terrorism strategy to combat radicalisation, the BBC’s Panorama programme has learned.
Conservative Muslims who teach that Islam is incompatible with Western democracy will be challenged as part of a new approach, Panorama has been told.
A senior Whitehall source said that Muslim leaders who urge separation will be isolated and publicly rejected.
He also said this would occur even if their comments fell within the law.
This will include those who argue that Muslims should not vote and that homosexuals should be condemned on religious grounds.
Panorama’s source said that Britain “needs to identify and back shared values” and that this new thinking will be central to a new counter-terrorism policy called Contest 2 due to be launched this Spring.

From 2014:
On a mission to end extremism
Behind the row between Michael Gove and Theresa May lies a very real threat to our values – as the Education Secretary understands all too well

He will probably want to widen the debate beyond the classroom, arguing that the real issue underlying particular problems in Birmingham and his spat with the Home Office is: how should the British state deal with non-violent extremism? By that he means extremism of all sorts, though the Islamist is the kind most manifest at present.
Of course, there’s a problem with definition, not least because “extremism” is an emotive word. In the present context it needs other words alongside it, such as segregationism. That is what, essentially, is what appears to have been happening in Birmingham.
It is our tolerance of intolerance that motivates Michael Gove’s mission to resist the ideological subversion of our institutions and democratic practices.

 

The issue isn’t just about extremist violence:
We can’t avoid the threat of Islamism

The truth about how the Home Office views Islamic extremism – by Theresa May’s former speech-writer

The debate on how best to ensure that religious extremism does not generate terrorism takes place in the context of another one: how to integrate immigrants into British society, and to ensure that they adopt values that are not actively hostile to the central ideals of our society – secular democracy, freedom of conscience, tolerance and the equality of everyone before the law.
The number of immigrants coming to this country increased enormously when Tony Blair relaxed the rules restricting entry. Many of the new immigrants were from Pakistan and Bangladesh. They went to the communities in Britain that had been settled and shaped by people who came from the same area, sometimes even the same village, as they did.
It is perfectly reasonable that immigrants, arriving in a strange land whose values and even language they do not fully understand, should prefer to be with people who are similar to them and who share their own language and values. But the effect of that preference is to create “diaspora” communities that do not integrate or adapt to the values of the new society.
Sir Paul Collier, a professor of development economics at Oxford University, has produced a model that shows that it inevitably becomes a self-reinforcing process: each diaspora community gets ever more entrenched in reproducing the values of the society from which the migrants to it come, which in turn attracts more migrants from that society to it, which then ensures that it is less integrated with the host society – and more attractive to the immigrants from the traditional society in Pakistan, India or wherever.
Professor Collier thinks that unless the state takes very definite steps to stop this process happening, it will continue more or less indefinitely, with the result that migrant communities become ever more alienated and remote from the society to which they are supposed to adapt.
That leads directly to the nightmare scenario: a Britain made up of mutually antagonistic “monocultures” that do not trust each other, do not work together and do not share the values of secular democracy, freedom of conscience and the equality of both sexes before the law.
State policy in Britain over the last two decades has fostered the formation of unintegrated diaspora communities: multiculturalism, which was for many years the dominant approach, encouraged communities to hold on to their own values – with the inevitable result that they have become more entrenched.
White racism is not the biggest obstacle to integration: the highest levels of segregation anywhere in Britain are those recorded between Indians and Pakistanis in towns in the north of England. The segregation between
African-Caribbeans and Asians is markedly higher than the degree of segregation between whites and African-Caribbeans. And it seems to be getting worse, not better. Immigrant communities are getting more isolated, less integrated and more locked into their own traditional values.
It is of critical significance to all our futures: what kind of society the next generation will inherit depends on who is right – and who wins the battle in Cabinet and in Parliament.

 

How we are betrayed by people like Easton…what is the truth about faith schools?  Here Toynbee spells out the difference between a nominally Christian faith school and a Muslim one:
Get off your knees

Afraid of being labelled Islamophobic, the left has fallen into an embarrassed silence on religion. We must speak up.

Now that religion is dangerously hot and divisive again, with new power to excite enmity and exclusion, the separation between church and state is no longer a dry academic question.
Muslims want to keep their children separate, while most parents who choose Christian faith schools do it to help their children get ahead. In heathen Britain, anachronistic church schools thrive because they are a fraud. By definition, most (of course not all) parents choosing them are not religious. Often church schools are a semi-conscious device for screening out troublesome children, ensuring a calmer environment and better results. Surveys show that faith school on average take fewer children on free school meals or with special needs. Those with deprived intakes sink to the bottom of the league tables along with the rest: no magic there. It’s about results, not sectarianism.

The rise of the concept of Islamophobia has struck too many dumb. They no longer express anti-religious views for fear of being Islamophobic. So, apart from protests by the doughty scions of the National Secular Society and their British Humanist Association allies, the left has fallen into an embarrassed silence on the subject of religion, just as it needs to speak up.

“Islamophobia” blurs racism and anti-religion dangerously. It’s interesting to see how Christian activists are now keen to make common cause with Muslims, drawing on their heat and passion. (The far left is doing the same, even less convincingly.) Far from a Clash of Civilisations between Islam and Christianity, in Britain they join together over religious broadcasting, schools and other rights. Officialdom is easily frightened of Islam, with good reason, treading carefully in a minefield.

Parents want good schools, and might prefer not to have to get on their knees in their local church to get into them. It is extraordinary that secular Britain is rushing to re-invent religion and give state aid to promote superstitions of every hue.

 

 

Is it just a witch hunt against islam?  There were huge concerns about Christian fauth schools as well…..and the part Labour played in creating this fundamentalist mess:

The Economist was right, back in 2001: ‘handing over the children to the preachers is wrong in principle and dangerous in practice’

Keep out the priests

Tony Blair’s plan to hand over more state education to religious organisations is dangerous

The issue is not whether people should be allowed to educate their children according to whatever religion they choose. Certainly they should, so long as they give their children a decent amount of real education at the same time as imbuing them with ancient beliefs and superstitions. The issue is whether state-funded education should be in the hands of religious organisations. It shouldn’t.
Every religion believes that it has a monopoly on truth. By paying for religious schools, the state is spending taxpayers’ money to help schools promote one set of beliefs over another. But it ought not to be the business of the state to interfere in these matters, either by suppressing, or by promoting, particular religions. Most decent countries agree on that point these days. A few, including Afghanistan and Britain, do not.
Religion, as the world has been reminded over the past three months, is a divisive influence. Britain’s northern cities, where riots exploded this summer between Asian and white gangs, are already split along racial-cum-religious lines. Mosques are clamouring for state cash for schools just as churches are. Education based on religion tends to entrench existing divides. Anybody who doubts that should visit Northern Ireland.
Britain already has 7,000 state-funded religious schools. That is 7,000 too many. The government will not make British education better by promoting these establishments, and it will make British society worse.

 

Here’s Toynbee again:

Only a fully secular state can protect women’s rights

It is astonishing that a Labour government has managed to lead the country into this religious quagmire

The veil turns women into things. It was shocking to find on the streets of Kabul that invisible women behind burkas are not treated with special respect. On the contrary, they are pushed and shoved off pavements by men, jostled aside as if almost subhuman without the face-to-face contact that recognises common humanity.

The veil is profoundly divisive – and deliberately designed to be.

Segregation gets worse, with a third of schools now religious. The Young Foundation’s study, The New East End, warns that in Tower Hamlets white parents have taken over four church secondary schools, making them virtually all white, so neighbouring secular schools have become 90% Bangladeshi. Church schools aid segregation

The Leicester Islamic Academy turns state school next year, but the duty to accept 25% non-Muslims may not trouble it much. The principal said on The Moral Maze that all girls must wear the school uniform, both the hijab and the head-to-toe jilbab. Not much choice there.

Will the next Labour leader be brave enough to confront growing segregation? If so, start by ending all religious state education. It would be popular: a Guardian/ICM poll finds 64% of voters think “the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind”. Desegregating schools is a matter of fairness: Muslims have the poorest communities with the worst schools, and are in danger of increasing isolation and anger. The veil is another totem of that danger.

 

 

Here the Guardian looks at fundamentalist Christian schools:
Divine and rule
Evangelical schools might be a godsend for fundamentalist Christian families, but is their single-minded approach fostering intolerance in society?

In the US evangelicals have effectively created a parallel system of education which has schooled hundreds of thousands of pupils in its messianic world view and the evangelical social and political agenda has moved into the mainstream. Evangelical Christianity is far from being such a force in Britain, but it is clearly the desire of many of those I met that it should become so. They are being inspired by the growing confidence of other faith groups. Supporters of ACE talked admiringly of Muslims who make it clear they do not wish to join the mainstream. Fundamentalist Christians point enviously to the fact that more children are currently educated in Muslim independent schools than independent evangelical Christian schools – about 14,000 compared with about 5,000 – and independent Muslim schools are growing more quickly. Rather than confronting this sectarianism with a call to inclusiveness, they would like to react with further sectarianism of their own. The goal is a more, rather than less, divided society. “Christians have been leaving it to the government to decide on their values, while Muslims have said, ‘This is mine, this is my culture, this is who I am’,” says Maxine Hargreaves. “Now we Christians are saying that we want to defend our culture, too. We want to take back our children.”

Two thirds ‘oppose’ faith schools

Nearly two thirds of the public oppose faith schools fearing their impact on social cohesion, a poll suggests.
An ICM/Guardian survey found 64% of people opposed the idea of government funding for faith schools.
Barry Sheerman who chairs the Commons education committee questioned the idea of a “ghettoised” system.
“Schools play a crucial role in integrating different communities and the growth of faith schools poses a real threat to this.”

Teachers lack faith in Muslim schools

The row over whether faith-based schools help or hinder divided communities was reopened today as teachers rejected recommendations for more Muslim faith schools.
A report being published today at the House of Lords warns that too many Muslim pupils are being failed in their academic and spiritual education.
The Muslims on Education policy document, which has been compiled by Muslim academics and educationalists, says state schools need to make better provision for Muslim pupils. It also calls for more faith-based schools to be established to cater for their needs.
However, the National Union of Teachers said that introducing more faith schools would be an “admission of [the] failure” of schools to meet the needs of Muslim pupils.
Dr Nasim Butt, headteacher at Brondesbury College, an independent Muslim school. He said too many Muslim pupils were being let down in the state and independent sectors.
Dr Butt told EducationGuardian.co.uk: “The most important aspect of this report is the underachievement of Muslim children.
“Faith schools are not more divisive, they are often beacons of excellence academically, spiritually and morally.
The report flies in the face of recommendations from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) select committee, which found that “ignorance and fear of other cultures” was pushing parents to send their children to schools where they would mingle almost exclusively with pupils from the same racial background. They also suggested that faith schools should not be allowed unless actively promoting multi-culturalism.

MP Andrew Bennett, Labour chair of the ODPM Commons committee, said Northern Ireland demonstrated the dangers of faith-based schools.
“Children live totally parallel lives. You start off with separate school, then you end up with separate health centres, you end up with separate supermarkets,” he told the Today programme.
“What we want is for children to have a good understanding of each other’s culture and separating them in schools is not going be a good idea.”

Top school’s creationists preach value of biblical story over evolution
State-funded secondary teachers do not accept findings of Darwin

Fundamentalist Christians who do not believe in evolution have taken control of a state-funded secondary school in England. In a development which will astonish many British parents, creationist teachers at the city technology college in Gateshead are undermining the scientific teaching of biology in favour of persuading pupils of the literal truth of the Bible.

Emmanuel is a non-denominational Christian school which achieves consistently outstanding academic results and received a glowing Ofsted report last year.

“All we are saying is that it’s up to children to make their own minds up. I haven’t had any complaints… The parents are happy, the students and teachers are happy; we have them standing in queues waiting to get in.”
A spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills said: “What schools need to do is teach the national curriculum in an impartial way. Personal doctrines should not override anything that should be taught in the curriculum.”

 

Here is a very long look at Labour’s part in encouraging the growth of faith schools and the quagmire that has created:

“Rome on the rates”‘

Public support for church schools was controversial, however. During debates on the 1902 bill, for example, ‘inside and outside Parliament there was outcry against “Rome on the rates”‘

Secretary of State for Education, David Blunkett (pictured), assured them that he did not want to upset the compromises of the 1944 Education Act and that church schools would continue to enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy within the state system.

The government then turned its attention to other denominations and faiths. It was concerned that a system which gave huge amounts of state funding to thousands of Church of England and Roman Catholic schools but hardly any to schools of other faiths was inherently discriminatory. Anxious to demonstrate its commitment to multiculturalism, it quickly set about addressing the problem.

Tony Blair told a conference of faith groups organised by the Christian Socialist Movement that church schools were a pillar of the education system, ‘valued by very many parents for their faith character, their moral emphasis and the high quality of education they generally provide’
…religious groups would be encouraged to work with the private sector in running weak or failing schools

A report commissioned by Bradford Council concluded that communities were becoming increasingly isolated along racial, cultural and religious lines, and that segregated schools were fuelling the divisions. The report was prophetic. At Easter there were riots in Bradford and during the summer the disorder spread to Oldham, Greater Manchester and Burnley.

Professor Richard Dawkins, who, in an open letter to Estelle Morris, said ‘After everything we’ve been through this year, to persist with financing segregated religion in sectarian schools is obstinate madness’

There was more criticism of faith schools when, in March 2002, The Guardian reported that Emmanuel City Technology College in Gateshead, set up under the Tories with £2m of sponsorship from evangelical Christian Sir Peter Vardy, had hosted a ‘creationist’ conference and that senior staff had urged teachers to promote biblical fundamentalism.

The furore grew. At the beginning of April 2002 leading clerics and scientists wrote to the Prime Minister expressing their ‘growing anxiety’ about the spread of faith schools and the introduction of creationist teaching. Downing Street officials told the group that Tony Blair would respond to their concerns ‘in the near future’ (The Observer 7 April 2002).

‘In the end, it is a more diverse school system that will deliver better results for our children and if you look at the actual results of the school, I think you will find they are very good.’
However, Blair’s commitment to ‘diversity’ meant he was quite happy to hand over state schools not only to creationists but also to a bewildering variety of faith groups (not to mention electrical retailer Dixons, drugs company Pfizer, Anna Kournikova’s sports agent, and the chairman of Reading Football Club).

Others were less enthusiastic. Robin McKie noted that while Scotland was attempting to tackle the problems caused by its religiously-segregated schools, England was plunging towards a ‘sad, sectarian future’. This would be the unavoidable consequence, he argued, of the government’s ‘persistent encouragement of faith schools exclusively built for Muslims, or for fundamental Christians, or for orthodox Jews, or – while they are it – for aliens’

Researchers at Bristol University, led by Professor Simon Burgess, warned that the lessons of Sir Herman Ouseley’s report on the Bradford riots of 2001 had been ignored and that ‘white flight’ and the rise of Muslim schools were turning England’s inner-city playgrounds into monocultural zones which were potential breeding grounds for intolerance and racism (The Guardian 1 April 2004).

If we are going to not have divided, ghettoised communities we have to be very careful of this enthusiasm that some in the Department for Education have for faith schools, and we have got to be very careful about the growth of very religious minorities getting a hold on academies. (The Observer 7 August 2005)

Chief Inspector of Schools David Bell. In a speech to the Hansard Society in January 2005 he warned that a traditional Islamic education did not equip Muslim children for living in modern Britain (The Guardian 18 January 2005).

Oldknow Academy

A small group of governors is making
significant changes to the ethos and culture
of the academy without full consultation.
They are endeavouring to promote a
particular and narrow faith-based ideology
in what is a maintained and non-faith
academy.
Many members of staff are afraid to speak
out against the changes taking place in the
academy.

The academy is not adequately ensuring that
pupils have opportunities to learn about faith
in a way that promotes tolerance and
harmony between different cultural and
religious traditions.

 

 

What do some high profiel Muslims think?:
The solution is that each and every Muslim child should be in state funded Muslim schools because western education makes a man stupid and selfish according to Lord Bertrand Russell.
Iftikhar Ahmad 

What else has Iftikhar Ahmad of the London School Islamics say?:
There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.

A community is held together by common values and principles.

[Here he gives a hidden clue as to what he wants…a Muslim caliphate…..]

The Muslim community has been passing through a phase of fourth Crusades. The battleground is the field of education, where the young generation will be educated properly with the Holly Quran in one hand and Sciences in other hand to serve the British society and the world at large. A true Muslim is a citizen of the world, which has become a small global village. We are going to prepare our youth to achieve that objective in the long run.

It is absurd to believe that Muslim schools, Imams and Masajid teach Muslim children anti-Semitic, homophobic and anti-western views.

Islam does not teach that Jews and Christians are pigs and monkeys.

British schooling and the British society is the home of institutional racism.

Racism is deeply rooted in British society.

This is the true picture of British broken society and the Muslim community does not want to be integrated. The British government is again asking us, Muslims, to adopt the” British values” and to integrate fully into the British way of life. But many so called “British values” are not acceptable to us.

The Muslims don’t want to integrate or abide by western law.

 

[Despite saying this earlier…There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.…he claims that any parent not wanting to send their child to a Muslim school is racist:]

Schools in parts of England are becoming increasingly segregated. The study focused on 13 local authorities. Many of the schools and colleges are segregated and this was generally worsening over recent years. This is RACISM because British society is the home of institutional racism. A study by Bristol University reveals that a high level of racial segregation in Oldham schools and tension between communities resulted in recent riots in 2001. The solution is that those schools where Muslim children are majority may be designated as Muslim community schools.

In the late 80s and early 90s, when I floated the idea of Muslim community schools, I was declared a “school hijacker” by an editorial in the Newham Recorder newspaper. This clearly shows that the British media does not believe in choice and diversity in the field of education and has no respect for those who are different.

The time has come for the Muslim community – in the form of Islamic charities and trusts – to manage and run those state schools where Muslim pupils are in the majority.
Muslim schools are doing better because a majority of the teachers are Muslim. The pupils are not exposed to the pressures of racism, multiculturalism and bullying.

And the case for faith schools wasn’t helped when the London School of Islamics claimed that a 16 year old Muslim girl who had been murdered by her father in an ‘honour killing’ was the victim of British state education. The tragedy could have been avoided, it said, if the ‘poor girl’ had been educated ‘in a Muslim school by Muslim teachers’ (The Guardian 14 October 2003).

 

 

Here is a dire warning from respected and high profile Muslim doctor who is part of the campaign group Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child:

WARNING TO ALL MUSLIM PARENTS

OUR MUSLIM CHILDREN WILL LEARN AND PICK UP HOMOSEXUALITY IN SCHOOLS TODAY BECAUSE OF THE FORCED INDOCTRINATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY BY OFSTED

Protest/send letter to your MP/Send a letter to the school of your children Watch and find out and make sure that your children are not BRAINWASHED to accept homosexuality or to become homosexuals? Please put this worrying new news on your websites, mention it in Friday sermon, send it to all Muslim contacts…Thank you WS Dr A Majid Katme Muslim Coordinator to SPUC

What other views might he propagate?

A leading Islamic doctor is urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella because they contain substances making them unlawful for Muslims to take.
Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, says almost all vaccines contain un-Islamic “haram” derivatives of animal or human tissue, and that Muslim parents are better off letting childrens’ immune systems develop on their own.
Dr Katme, an NHS psychiatrist, said: “If you breastfeed your child for two years – as the Koran says – and you eat Koranic food like olives and black seed, and you do ablution each time you pray, then you will have a strong defence system.”

The Guardian has its doubts about him:

Is there a doctor in the mosque?
The dubious medical advice of Dr Majid Katme, a respected figure in the British Muslim community, is placing lives at risk.
Which is the greater menace: Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Islamic Medical Association of the UK?
“Single sex environment in clinics and in hospitals is the safest and best way forward … female medical staff with female patients and male medical staff with male patients.”
Dr Katme does, however, appear to approve of vaccination against lesbianism – “We must vaccinate our children against this curse” – but perhaps in that particular case it’s the lesser of two evils.
The real problem, though, it that Dr Katme is a respected figure in the British Muslim community. Mothers who wouldn’t dream of listening to Hizb ut-Tahrir will listen to him. Many may also prefer his word – as a “good Muslim” – to that of the Department of Health or the BMA.

Policy Exchange had its doubts about faith schools of all religions in 2010:

A new report from Policy Exchange recommends reforms to faith schools to prevent infiltration from extremists.
It concludes that Britain’s education system, including OfSted and the Department for Education, is currently not equipped to meet such challenges. The report says:
“Current due diligence checks are piecemeal, partial and lack in-depth expertise;
The Coalition Government’s policy of opening up the education system to new academies and free schools programmes could be exploited unless urgent measures are taken to counter extremist influence;
Britain lags behind other liberal European democracies in addressing these problems in schools.”

Although PE mentions the Coalition’s academies if you have read through the information about Labour you will see that their academy schools were thought to be just as vulnerable to infiltration by extremists.

Much Ado About Nothing

 

 

Incredible really, the BBC spent £300,000 covering up the findings of the Balen Report which was an important and revealing investigation into the BBC’s journalism in the Middle East but it is happy to tell us of the inner workings of the BBC press operation, the backroom politicking and media gladhanding that went on during the political bunfight between the Gove and May camps.

Theresa May and Michael Gove: How the political storm broke

Believe me, when special advisers call you at 1.30am you know you’ve got a story on your hands.

It is an outbreak provoked by a genuine policy disagreement about extremism – and about the future outlook, and leadership, of the Conservative Party when Mr Cameron is no longer in charge.

 

For the BBC this saga is all about the Westminster politics and a chance to put the boot into the Conservatives and a timely opportunity to float the idea that Cameron may be on his way out.

And although Chris Mason notes that this farce revolves around a disagreement about ‘extremism’ the BBC seems remarkably reluctant to actually investigate the issues surrounding that and to actually seek to define what any definition of extremism might include.

Even in this long report specifically related to the subject and the fact of an argument about that very definition the BBC doesn’t get near to defining extremism merely giving a general overview:

May and Gove in row over extremism in schools

“They argued about how to define extremism. Mr Gove has long argued that Whitehall is too soft on extremism; that it only confronts people once they’ve turned to violence; that you should ‘drain the swamp’ and not wait for ‘the crocodiles to reach the boat’.

 

But what did a narrow or broad definition consist of?  Kind of important but possibly too inflammatory should the broad definition include too much censure of Islam for the BBC’s liking.

 

Why the BBC concentrates on the mechanics of the argument and not the content is a mystery.

There must be disagreements every day in government about policy, especially between the coalition partners and yet the BBC reports this as if it were the apocalypse.

This story only blew up because a  special advisor with the hots for the man Gove criticised went ballistic and began making highly inflammatory and inaccurate statements to journalists and went on to release May’s letter to Gove.

The BBC, amongst others, lapped up her revelations and reported them as credible, authentic insider comments from a ‘Home Office source’.

‘A Home Office source told the BBC “he was trying to make it someone else’s problem”.

Those around Mr Gove pointed out it was his view that for over a generation there had been a reluctance in Whitehall to confront extremism unless it developed into terrorism – and his criticism did not relate specifically to the current home secretary.

But a Home Office source was blunt, telling the BBC: “The Department for Education is responsible for schools, the Home Office is not.”

“They have got a problem and they are trying to make it someone else’s problem,” the source added.’

 

 

But as you can see from this and from the quote below the Home Office is responsible for tackling extremism in schools and proactively sought control:

“At the meeting he argued for a broader definition. Mrs May, for a narrower one. She won.”

The BBC’s political reporters must know that and yet eagerly reported the words of the spad claiming that Gove had dodged his responsibilities and failed to do his duty whilst passing the buck.

Only a year to go till the election.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Global Family

 

 

The BBC is just relentless:

A Point of View: Taking England back to the Dark Ages

I am not sure that it’s just a coincidence that Switzerland is one of the more reactionary and anti-immigrant nations in Europe.

My view is that we need fewer borders, not more. That’s why the European Union makes sense to me. I worry that if we were to go back to historical precedent for the basis of our political units, we would end up fighting medieval battles, not with bows and arrows, but with immigration rules and tax regimes. In the 21st Century, surely it’s time to celebrate what unites us, not what divides us. If we are ever to overcome the problem of climate change, we think globally and act globally. I do love the idea of bringing back the heptarchy, both because I think smaller countries work better, but also because I love traditions. But, proud as I am to be an East Anglian, I think I am first and foremost a human being.

 

 

Geddit?  ‘Taking England back to the Dark Ages’ by closing the borders, leaving Europe and creating little nation states.

Hang on...isn’t that what we have been warned would be the result of mass immigration when the immgrants refuse to integrate?

 

A good trick by the BBC using a ‘point of view’ to smuggle in blatantly prejudiced and biased rhetoric to promote its favoured subjects.

 

 

Settlements

 

 

The vast immigration this country has suffered recently has been certainly undemocratic in the way it was foisted upon us….if it was undemocratic there must be a good case to make that it is also illegal with politicians implementing their pet policies without a mandate to do so….not just undemocratic by default but by design, the politicians deliberately keeping the public out of the debate and hiding what they intended to do, openly lying to them about the consequences….remember when Labour told us that only 13,000 immigrants were going to come here?

Many immigrant communities have grown up around the country, becoming more isolated and ghettoised year on year as more and more immigrants flock to the same areas to be with their ‘countrymen’ making integration ever more difficult and unlikely.

 

The Telegraph in 2011 looked at the damage the BBC’s censorship has done to Britain:

How the BBC’s silence on immigration damaged the country

Mark Thompson’s confession that the BBC shied away from subjects like immigration shows how an insidious culture of the unsayable took hold under Labour, says Jenny McCartney.

The topic of immigration today is no longer primarily bound up with racism, but with resources and economics: the views of the children and grandchildren of the Windrush generation are just as varied on the subject as anyone else’s. All of this should have led to a vigorous discussion, on the BBC and elsewhere, which would have helped considerably to detoxify the debate.

Yet for far too long, the corporation simply bottled it, preferring to leave any mention of the i-word to the BNP. As a result, the notion of the “unsayable” was perpetuated, an official omertà that let government policy proceed unchallenged – in a chaotic style that even Labour now admits was a mistake – while popular concern mounted.

As the BBC has now realised, difficult topics do not evaporate because one ignores them: the unsayable has a way of becoming the unavoidable.

 

That was said in 2011.

 

Now in 2014 it seems people have come to recognise that certain thngs are unavoidable:

We can’t avoid the threat of Islamism

The truth about how the Home Office views Islamic extremism – by Theresa May’s former speech-writer

 

Alasdair Palmer in the Telegraph looks at the consequences of immigration starting with terrosim and how governemtn treats that threat, moving on to the effects on society as a whole.

The advocates of the narrow concentration on terrorists insisted that “we can only beat back the crocodiles who come close to the boat”. Those who disagreed felt that, in the long term, the only way to deal with the crocodiles was to drain the swamp – and that meant, they said, targeting extremist ideology.

The argument between Mr Gove and Mrs May – which resurrected talk about “beating back the crocodiles” and “draining the swamp” – is a continuation of that long-standing debate.

 

Here Palmer looks at the disastrous effects that mass, uncontrolled immigration and failed integration brings…….

The debate on how best to ensure that religious extremism does not generate terrorism takes place in the context of another one: how to integrate immigrants into British society, and to ensure that they adopt values that are not actively hostile to the central ideals of our society – secular democracy, freedom of conscience, tolerance and the equality of everyone before the law.

The number of immigrants coming to this country increased enormously when Tony Blair relaxed the rules restricting entry. Many of the new immigrants were from Pakistan and Bangladesh. They went to the communities in Britain that had been settled and shaped by people who came from the same area, sometimes even the same village, as they did.

It is perfectly reasonable that immigrants, arriving in a strange land whose values and even language they do not fully understand, should prefer to be with people who are similar to them and who share their own language and values. But the effect of that preference is to create “diaspora” communities that do not integrate or adapt to the values of the new society.

Sir Paul Collier, a professor of development economics at Oxford University, has produced a model that shows that it inevitably becomes a self-reinforcing process: each diaspora community gets ever more entrenched in reproducing the values of the society from which the migrants to it come, which in turn attracts more migrants from that society to it, which then ensures that it is less integrated with the host society – and more attractive to the immigrants from the traditional society in Pakistan, India or wherever.

Professor Collier thinks that unless the state takes very definite steps to stop this process happening, it will continue more or less indefinitely, with the result that migrant communities become ever more alienated and remote from the society to which they are supposed to adapt.

That leads directly to the nightmare scenario: a Britain made up of mutually antagonistic “monocultures” that do not trust each other, do not work together and do not share the values of secular democracy, freedom of conscience and the equality of both sexes before the law.

State policy in Britain over the last two decades has fostered the formation of unintegrated diaspora communities: multiculturalism, which was for many years the dominant approach, encouraged communities to hold on to their own values – with the inevitable result that they have become more entrenched.

White racism is not the biggest obstacle to integration: the highest levels of segregation anywhere in Britain are those recorded between Indians and Pakistanis in towns in the north of England. The segregation between

African-Caribbeans and Asians is markedly higher than the degree of segregation between whites and African-Caribbeans. And it seems to be getting worse, not better. Immigrant communities are getting more isolated, less integrated and more locked into their own traditional values.

What can be done to reverse this depressing trend?

The Home Office nurtures the hope that integration is going to happen naturally without any active intervention from the Government. The children of migrants, or their children’s children, will come to realise that our way of life – based around freedom of choice and material prosperity – is better than the poverty, bigotry and intolerance that characterise religious extremism. But officials at the Home Office insist that immigrants can only come to that conclusion by themselves.

At Michael Gove’s Department for Education, there is a more pessimistic conviction, that if we do not intervene to stop religious extremism, it will flourish and create communities that reproduce values utterly inimical to British ideas of toleration and individual freedom. Mr Gove’s supporters note that radically conservative Muslims already see themselves as locked in a battle with secular culture, one they have to win if their own religion is not to wither away.

It is of critical significance to all our futures: what kind of society the next generation will inherit depends on who is right – and who wins the battle in Cabinet and in Parliament.

 

Despite such a debate being critical to all our futures it is something the BBC has long sought to suppress and even now it continues to promote immigration and attack those who oppose it…see their reaction to UKIP in the run up to the election. The BBC has a similar approach to Islam…it will certainly discuss issues surrounding some aspects of Islam but still seeks to censor the debate in the interests of ‘community cohesion’…..the paradox being such censorship only serves to increase the likelihood of conflict and allows the extremists to operate unchecked in society.  As you can see from the BBC’s reaction to the Trojan Horse affair where it has attempted to downplay its significance, excuse the extremist’s actions and instead uses the opportunity to turn it into a story about politics in Westminster the BBC still wants to control the debate and the narrative.

What damage will history reveal is now being done to Britain and its society by the BBC’s censorship and promotion of multi-culturalism and mass immigration?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BBC #Fail Gove Innocent?

 

The BBC has given a platform to Labour’s Tristram Hunt and Yvette Cooper all week to trash Gove and his education policies…yesterday Hunt was on the BBC’s ‘prestigious’ Today programme and Cooper was on ‘Pienaar’s Politics’ this morning spinning the same message…..Gove has been derelict in his duty allowing Islamism to thrive in schools, he failed to take action when warned of the threat, and that his school’s policy actually makes things worse by preventing any action being taken to deal with such threats when they arise.

So why didn’t Gove and the Department of Education take action, or any serious measures, to stem the Islamist infiltration when warned in 2010?

You might have thought the  massively resourced news organisation that is the BBC would have asked Gove that question, or even asked themselves that, I have yet to hear them do so, but it appears the BBC isn’t actually interested in the answer.

The Sunday Times is and seems to have come up with something that should alter the narrative somewhat.

In 2007 Tahir Alam, Mr ‘Trojan Horse’ himself, published with the MCB, an Islamist’s charter that was distributed to education authorities and schools across the country with the intent that they would implement policies that favoured Muslim pupils.

In 2008, just as Birmingham council were being warned of Islamist infitration of its schools, the Labour Government employed that very selfsame Islamist Tahir Alam as an advisor to their ‘Prevent’ anti-radicalisation programme who went on to ‘develop the right channels to visit Whitehall on a regualr basis…fashioning himself as a kind of spokesman on all things education that concerned Muslim communities…he was always in and out of the Home Office.’

A poacher staying a poacher.

The Times goes on ‘More than a year ago sources in the education department told the Sunday Times that the Home Office was encouraging Gove’s department to approve applications for free schools and academies run by Muslims to make it easier to monitor radicalisation or extremism….but Gove did not want his free school programme “hijacked” and wanted May to take a tougher line on terrorism in general.’

 

So let’s think about that…the Department of Education’s schools policy was ‘hijacked’ by the Home Office, from 2008, and schools allowed to be deliberately ‘radicalised’ so that the security services could monitor certain people more easily….a programme shaped in part by the very Islamist at the centre of the recent furore, Tahir Alam,  put in place by a Labour government which began this policy of handing over schools to Islamist extremists….a man who was also an Oftsed inspector.

 

So shouldn’t Tristram Hunt et al also be asked some very difficult questions about Labour’s role in encouraging extemists to take over schools?

At least we have an idea why the DofE stood back, no thanks to the BBC…it was obeying orders from the Home Office…the same Home Office that ‘won’ the argument, once again, with Gove over the definition of ‘extremism’ and how to tackle it…proving that Gove was correct in saying it was the Home Office’s responsibility and that they had failed to deal effectively with extemism.

In other words Gove is really off the hook if this is all true….his only sin being the public complaints made by him about the Home Office in the Times this week…for which he has apologised.

The BBC is giving Yvette Cooper headline billing on its frontpage right now after her Pienaar interview as she demands May also apologises…as she should quite rightly…however the story is obviously somewhat different to that spun by Labour…they should also be under the spotlight from the BBC….so far they are not….and all we hear are the critics of Gove…the leftwing NUT’s Christine Blower being the sole commenter, other than Labour’s duo, about Gove this morning on the news bulletin that I heard..naturally damning him and his policies.

Perhaps the BBC’s frontpage tomorrow will be Gove demanding Hunt and Cooper apologise for years of appeasing Islamist extremists.  Somehow you doubt it.

 

An update to this post after reading the Sunday Times magazine where the wonderfully diverse Baroness Warsi reveals ‘A Life in the Day’.

For what other reason than the stated one above might a government tread carefully with all things Islamic, barring the obvious threats of angry, alienated, disaffected youth?

Warsi, a minister from 2010, tells us that her first challenge was to make sure that Islamophobia, like anti-Semitism, was put on the government agenda.  She says ‘I believe I have done that.’

Must be difficult for a government on the one hand to deal with er, what shall we call it…em…’cultural conservatism’, and on the other be promoting…er…what to call it…let’s say ‘cultural conservatism’…especially when you have a ‘culturally conservative’ minister in office…never mind Mr Trojan Horse guiding the security service’s strategy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘The BBC will try to dampen it down. We mustn’t let that happen.’

 

There are various inquiries being carried out investigating claims of Islamist’s infiltrating schools seeking to run them along Islamic lines.

Once these investigations have been concluded and the dust has settled there needs to be one other investigation.  An investigation into the BBC’s role in this affair.

I use the term ‘The BBC’ here because it is clear that what is happening is not one or two journalists imposing their own interpretation on events,  there is an obvious direction from above….when so many BBC journalists refuse to report something as important and damning as the MCB’s 2007 ‘Advice to Schools’ it can only be because an editorial message has gone out not to, conversely when all journalists start using the same phrase, such as ‘cultural conservatism’, you can be similarly assured that there is another editorial guideline passed down from on high setting the correct narrative.

The BBC hasn’t just stood back and reported events impartially, it has actively sought to mislead its audience about those events, it has downplayed not only the events themselves and the activities of the Islamists, but the importance of them in regard to society as a whole, not only that but the BBC has set out to damage Ofsted and especially Michael Gove…damaging them it hopes to also to damage the credibility of the investigations by Ofsted and the government into ‘extremism’ and Birmingham schools.  Worse, the BBC has actively promoted the takeover of schools by Islamists saying ‘…once you accept that certain schools are Islamic schools, you can then think about constructing a governing body with proper representation and management processes to prevent the problems in Birmingham.’

The BBC suggests this is a good way to both promote cohesion but also control the ‘extremists’….perhaps somewhat naive of the Journalists deep inside the BBC bubble.  Such journalists should take their own advice and heed the ‘warning from history‘ they are so keen on usually….German politicians and industrialists thought they could control Hitler…they couldn’t.

The BBC is muddying the water….on the one hand they report that there is no evidence of a Muslim plot but then report there is evidence and Gove ignored it…. trying to downplay the significance of the plot and yet use the dangers of the plot to attack Gove.

One major and obvious ‘mistake’ in the BBC’s coverage is omission of the central question that set Gove and May at loggerheads…how to define ‘extremism’?  May wanted a narrow definition, Gove a broader one encompassing not just violence or threats of or incitement to violence but what might also bring Islam itself into question.  Is extremism solely violence or does it also include the various social and judicial imperatives inherent in Islam for example in regard to the status of women especially in regard to rape or their harsh and restrictive demands on women in the name of ‘modesty’, or else FGM, or the treatment of apostates, gays and other religions or non-Muslims?  Cameron takes a line more akin to Gove’s in his 2011 Munich speech…Europe needs to wake up to what is happening in our own countries.…the “doctrine of state multiculturalism” has failed.

Pupils as young as six were taught to treat Western women as ‘white prostitutes’ by a school at the centre of the ‘Trojan Horse’ Islamist plot.

 

The BBC has recognised that there is the danger of Gove’s definition taking hold despite May apparently winning the argument….it’s hard to hold back the tide of reality when it is blatantly obvious what is going on.  The BBC’s answer?  As mentioned below they have adopted a phraseology that they hope will deflect criticism of Islam and place the blame for events at the schools on ‘conservative cultural practices’ as they often do with many stories that would otherwise highlight uncomfortable truths about Islamic justice and attitudes.

The BBC will report what many people tell of very serious issues in Birmingham schools and of a plot to Islamise schools, for instance, ‘Khalid Mahmood, MP for Perry Barr, believes there are reasons to be concerned. “All the information I’m getting… is there has been a serious bid to take over most of the schools in the east and south of the city,” he said.’

The problem comes when we get the BBC’s own interpretation….all that ‘evidence’ is suddenly forgotten, the BBC claiming:   ‘The focus is not on a “conspiracy”. The “Trojan Horse” letter is now widely assumed to be a forgery, and appears to have been written to alarm people.’

The BBC is rather casual when it comes to those facts, or reporting relevant facts that might change perceptions.  Here they report this, ‘A chair of governors at one of the schools involved described the reaction to this letter as a “witch hunt”. ‘   But who was that ‘chair of governors’?  Tahir Alam, the man at the very centre of the conspiracy claims, which immediately puts into question his claim of a ‘witch hunt’.

Why did the BBC hide that fact?

The BBC is very keen not to tell you some things about Tahir Alam that might set the alarm bells ringing…for instance the Times revealed that he had been a member of an Islamist extremist group, he also wrote a document laying out the Muslim Council of Britain‘s demands to schools as to how they should adapt their schools in order to suit Muslim pupils.

Whilst the BBC has never reported the existence of that important and revealing document it has reported that Alam was in fact an Ofsted inspector.  Why would the BBC report that fact but not the others?  The suspicion must be that they are attempting to undermine Ofsted by saying the man at the centre of its investigations was in fact employed by them and therefore must be a credible and respectable person.

The BBC is hiding Alam’s islamist tendencies whilst publishing something that they might believe would help his case.

 

What of that ‘conspiracy’, or in the BBC’s opinion, ‘Non-conspiracy’?

The BBC claims that there is no plot but merely a small, insignificant group of people,

‘The Ofsted results also support the notion that this is really about a clique of governors.

The leaders of four of the schools expected to go into special measures are good friends, who speak a lot via WhatsApp, the mobile messaging app.

The idea that there is no wider conspiracy has support: people working in counter-extremism in Birmingham also do not think there is an acute broader problem in the city.’

 

‘The problem is really about a small clique of governors’?  Well yes…and no.  That surely is the central thrust of the claims anyway…that a group of governors has been inserted into schools so that they can ensure that they are run along Islamic lines.  But it doesn’t rely solely on governors, it requires the help of teachers, parents and pupils….in other words there must be a conspiracy if such events are in fact happening.

Tahir Alam is in fact a classic ‘Trojan Horse’ himself…..having infiltrated Ofsted as an inspector, he runs a Trust which controls numerous schools as well as being a governor of Park View School.

 

The BBC not only seeks to mislead audiences by omitting facts such as Alam’s Islamist tendencies, or by downplaying other facts such as whether it is a deliberate conspiracy or whether the Trojan Horse letter is real or not, or by adding other facts into the mix to muddle things up such as Alam being an Ofsted inspector but it also manipulates the language used so that certain concepts are pushed to the fore and others are pushed to the back and out of people’s minds.

You may have noticed that the BBC is now frequently using phrases such as ‘cultural conservatism’ rather than islamic extremism, ‘For Ofsted, the issue in these schools is that they are socially conservative.’

This form of words is intended to move audiences away from the idea that the problem stems from Islam itself, the problem is social or cultural….ignoring the fact that such societies or cultures are defined and governed by Islam in every way.  Everything the BBC does is with the intention of downplaying the influence of the Islamic beliefs that drive these plots.  The BBC believes that if the public realises what is actually happening they will no longer be supportive of a growing, separate, Islamic culture and society within their own and that this will lead to conflict.  The BBC’s alternative is to keep a lid on things, sit back and do nothing and allow the Islamists to take control, as evidenced by the BBC’s promotion of Islamising schools for a quiet life.

 

More evidence of the BBC’s dangerous and highly political game can be witnessed by listening to Evan Davis on the Today programme (08:33:40) ostensibly examining the events surrounding the schools, Oftsed, Gove and May.

Who does he invite on to comment?  Labour’s Tristram Hunt and Islamist Salma Yaqoob.

Hunt was allowed free rein to attack Gove and to claim that it was outrageous that he hadn’t investigated claims of Islamists trying to take over schools made in 2010, and that Ofsted was clearly not working properly.

Davis didn’t challenge any of this and in fact encouraged the narrative about Oftsed being unfit for purpose after having given Park View School an outstanding classification in 2012 but now possibly going to be placing the school in special measures.

Firstly this is what a teacher from Park View said of that 2012 inspection:  “They were very analytical, razor-sharp; these people really knew their stuff.”

So Ofsted ‘knew their stuff’.  The teacher was there, he saw the inspection being done, he liked what he saw.  I might suggest he knew more than an opportunist politician with perfect hindsight and a biased journalist.

But what of Hunt’s claim that Gove or Ofsted did nothing in 2010 when warned of the Islamist threat?

Davis might well have leapt in there, but didn’t, and demanded why Labour had done nothing in 2008 when Birmingham Council was warned of a similar plot:  “Many demands were made that were simply impossible to meet and it began to appear like there was some sort of organised attempt to undermine the management of the school.”

Davis could also have asked why Labour, in power for 13 years, did nothing about the approaching disaster that Headmaster Tim Boyes said has been bubbling away for 20 years:

“Back in 2010, I had a whole series of colleagues, other head teachers, who were reporting concerns about governance and things that weren’t going well in their schools.

“Over 20 years… tensions and politics have exploded and as a result head teachers have had nervous breakdowns, they’ve lost their jobs, schools have been really torn apart,” he said.

 

Sounds quite serious but Evan Davis decided such questions were irrelevant and didn’t bother to derail the Labour politician’s anti-Gove narrative….maybe because the BBC recognises that Mr Gove and Mrs May are two of the “biggest beasts” in the Conservative Party’ and to damage them would have many beneficial results for the BBC’s own narratives in regard to Labour and Islam.

What about that Ofsted inspection in 2012 and the subsequent downgrading in 2014?  Davis suggested that this indicated that Ofsted may have serious problems…but does it?

So was that 2012 classification of ‘outstanding’ wrong…or is the new one wrong?

 

There are some points that might be relevant in deciding how Ofsted came to its conclusions in 2012 and subsequently came to change them two years later.

  • Firstly the inspection was done with two days notice given to the school prior to the inspection, time enough to tidy things up and get the story right.
  • Secondly the inspection may not have been an aggressive, hard hitting one…the teacher who praised Oftsed above said this,Outside the lesson, the history teacher, Lee Donaghy, praises the approach taken by the Ofsted team that visited the school in January. This is a view many other heads and teachers dispute – but Donaghy warmly describes the inspectors as “collaborative”. “It was more ‘done with’, rather than ‘done to’,” Donaghy says.’    So the inspectors were ‘collaborative’, doing the inspection in close cooperation with the staff…..a recipe for a bit of a fudge?
  • Thirdly there is political correctness, the thinking that multi-culturalism is to be positively encouraged and that Islam especially should be welcomed if it helps with integration and cohesion.  In other words the fact that schools were introducing Islamic practices would not have raised alarm bells, quite the opposite in fact….the actual, damaging,  effects of such an Islamic culture being adopted and enforced by the schools in relation to the wider society may have been ignored, Islamic values being seen as beneficial and Muslim pupils under its yoke not alienated by being forced into a ‘Western’ style education.

 

Tristram Hunt demands to know how a school classed as oustanding in 2012 can two years later be downgraded so far…and yet he has no questions about a school classed as good in 2007 and then in 2010 in an interim inspection still classed as only good which can be reclassified as ‘oustanding’ two years later in 2012.

This report from the Mail may give a clue as to how Ofsted classifications can jump so readily between grades based on, well, very little of substance:

Payhembury Primary in Devon was criticised by Ofsted for being insufficiently ‘multicultural’.

So the 68-pupil Church of England school is asking parents to pay for their children to make a two-day trip to a school with a wide mix of ethnic backgrounds.

The visit – described by one parent as patronising and bizarre – has been sold to parents as a way of boosting Payhembury’s Ofsted grade from good to the top rating of outstanding.

 

 

So that was the BBC’s platform for Labour’s tub thumping rhetoric but what about Salma Yaqoob?  Yaqoob is an Islamist herself, ‘radicalised’ by 9/11,  and so it must raise a few eyebrows that the BBC should bring her, an Islamist, on to reassure us that there is no Islamist plot to take over our schools and that it is in fact a government conspiracy with right wing media that creates a hysterical anti-Muslim witch hunt…her standard reply when Islam is criticised in any way whatsoever.

Davis allowed her to rant on only interrupting to feed her a question that she could then answer with another rant.  Not a lot of journalism going on as she went completely unchallenged.

Davis remarkaby came up with that old phrase we’ve been hearing a lot on the BBC recently…’cultural conservatism’…trying to suggest that this wasn’t a bad thing really but often confused with that bad old ‘extremism’…‘people often mix them all up together’ don’t you know old chap.

Davis referred to a Daily Mail article which he said talked of such ‘cultural conservatism’…however read the article and if that is cultural conservatism it boggles the mind as to what you would have to do to be considered ‘extreme’ in Davis’ eyes.

 

Yaqoob said, ‘she had yet to see “a shred of evidence” that pupils were being radicalised.  “The kids of Birmingham are already damned as being extremist,”‘

She kept referring to the ‘kids’ but they aren’t the issue…the issue was with the governors and teachers.  Making ‘kids’ the ‘victims’ of this ‘witch hunt’ as the basis for her defence of the schools was a rhetorical trick purely designed to distract attention and create a particular negative emotional reaction against Ofsted and those who make claims of a conspiracy.

Yaqoob claims that she ‘Doesn’t want to see extremism in the schools‘…and yet she is a hardened Islamist herself:

Salma Yaqoob Picks Today to Support Jihadists

Salma Yaqoob, one of the best known activitsts in the moribund RESPECT Party, cut her political teeth campaigning for the British jihadists who were imprisoned by the Yemeni authorities for their terrorist activities. 

She also wrote a playful article in Inayat Bunglawala’s “Trends” magazine, in which she imagined Britain as an Islamic Republic.  The piece ended with a terrified Salman Rushdie fleeing the country.

You’ll also remember that at Ken Livingstone’s “Clash of Civilisations” debate, Salma Yaqoob called the 7/7 terrorist murders “reprisal attacks“.

 

‘Harry’s Place’ claimed in 2008 that, ‘Salma Yaqoob’s entire political career has been devoted to stirring up sectarian hatred.

and added, ‘Salma Yaqoob is invited to write op-eds for the Guardian. She is a favourite of the BBC, and is repeatedly invited on programmes like Question Time, where she is presented as a serious politician and a spokewoman for Britain’s muslims. In reality, she is a marginal politician, for a tiny party, whose interventions in local and national politics have been poisonous.  Let us hope that we hear a lot less of Salma Yaqoob in the future.’

 

Well, obviously not so far.

 

Yaqoob laid into Gove claiming that this was in fact a government conspiracy against Muslims and that the spectre of an Islamic ‘Trojan Horse’ had been haunting Gove’s imagination for a long time as evidenced by a chapter titled ‘Trojan Horse’ in a book he’d written.

However on that basis let’s have a look at something Yaqoob has written and use it to judge her intentions and motivations…a tract in an Islamic magazine run by MCB man Inayat Bunglawala happily imagining an Islamic state of Britain:

 

 

Guess it is pretty clear exactly where her loyalties lie and her intentions.

The question might be asked exactly where the BBC’s loyalties lie and what are their intentions as they promote Islamist takeovers of schools, hide evidence that this is happening and attempt to do political damage to elected politicians?

 

 

You may want to read Charles Moore’s piece in the Telegraph:

While we turn a blind eye to Islamists, our children suffer

 We have now become accustomed, unfortunately, to the painful discovery that children were abused in the state system – in some schools, hospitals, children’s homes. When these things are exposed, we all agree how disgraceful it was that the authorities turned a blind eye. The danger from Islamist extremism is comparable. It too is an abuse of children, and yet we still dare not face it.

 

And Damian Thompson:

Radical Islam in secular schools: now the shocking truth emerges

“Students’ understanding of the arts, different cultures and other beliefs are limited.” That’s one of the complaints about Birmingham schools made by Ofsted in their leaked report. It sounds like a relatively mild criticism.

Not so. What the Trojan Horse scandal has revealed is that leaders of the Muslim community in Birmingham have been creating a Wahhabi-inspired counterculture in secular, not faith, schools.

I expect plenty of controversy in the days to come, as the Ofsted report is published and its implications sink in. The BBC will try to dampen it down. We mustn’t let that happen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boko Haram In Birmingham?

 

“Al-Islam will prevail over all other ways of life. Look at how [the] Muslim population is increasing in the UK.”  Deputy Head of Carlton Bolling school in Bradford, Akhmed Hussain

 

The BBC is playing a very dangerous game as it clambers, once again, into bed with Islamists and promotes their ideology.

There was, and continues to be, a plot to Islamise schools, not just in Birmingham but across Britain.  We have an attitude that is growing that Western education is wrong for Muslims…’Boko Haram’….just where will that lead in years to come?

The BBC is not just downplaying the significance of this and its consequences but is actively supporting and promoting the Islamist agenda.

 

Theresa May wrote a letter to Michael Gove which the BBC quotes from:

In a letter, Mrs May said: “The allegations relating to schools in Birmingham raise serious questions about the quality of school governance and oversight arrangements.”

She added: “Is it true that Birmingham City Council was warned about these allegations in 2008? Is it true that the Department for Education was warned in 2010? If so, why did nobody act?”

 

What they miss out is a rather crucial statement in the letter:

‘How did it come to pass, for example, that one of the governors at Park View was the chairman of the education committee of the Muslim Council of Britain?” she wrote.’

 

Who was that governor?  Tahir Alam, who is at the centre of the Trojan Horse plot allegations….and the man who produced the MCB’s 2007 document detailing how they would like schools, not just in Birmingham, but across the UK, to ‘Islamise’ their education.

From the Telegraph:
Guide to school Islamisation, by ‘ringleader’ of Trojan Horse plot
School governor who is alleged ringleader of the Trojan Horse plot in Birmingham wrote 72-page document on manipulating teachers and curriculum

This is a document that provides proof positive of Alam’s intentions….and yet not only does the BBC not refer to Alam and his connections to the MCB here but it also refuses to mention in any article the fact that this damning document even exists and that he produced it….with so many BBC reporters examining this story but none mentioning the 2007 document in connection to it,  it can only be a directive from above that has told them not to link to it…why?

Why would the BBC hide evidence of Alam’s Islamist ideology?

Here the BBC’s Chris Cooke gives a clue.…deciding there is no Trojan Horse ‘conspiracy’ and that the letter is a fake..with no evidence that it is…but plenty of evidence to back up the possibility it is real:

‘The focus is not on a “conspiracy”. The “Trojan Horse” letter is now widely assumed to be a forgery, and appears to have been written to alarm people.’

 

The Telegraph takes a more balanced approach and reveals evidence of a plot:

Whether or not the letter is genuine, much of what it describes is certainly real.

Investigations by The Telegraph, separate to and in parallel with the “Trojan Horse” letter, reveal that there is indeed an organised group of Muslim teachers, education consultants, school governors and activists dedicated to furthering what one of them describes as an “Islamising agenda” in Birmingham’s schools. 

Here for instance is a message from one of that group:

The activists claim credit for the appointment of a new Muslim head teacher at a secular state secondary in Birmingham, where she will start in September. It was a “hard battle” but the “dynamics have finally changed”, says one member of the group, who identifies himself as a school governor. “A true achievement. At last!” exults one member of the group.

“She is a very astute lady. She knows her game,” he writes. “Please don’t pressurise her to start the Islamising agenda first. That will be a lot easier when she is respected as leader. She has to establish herself with minimum controversy for the first six months, and lead the people to believe in her before they believe in her policies.”

 

A pretty  good indication that there is a ‘plot’.

 

The BBC also doesn’t tell us that Alam has an extremist history:
According to the Sunday Times, the man at the centre of the so-called Trojan Horse plot to Islamicise secular schools in Birmingham had been the leader of a fundamentalist group which had aspired to turn Britain into an Islamic state…

‘Tahir Alam, chairman of governors at Park View School, has been embroiled in the controversy surrounding the alleged takeover of state schools by Islamic fundamentalists. He was previously the leader of HIKAM, an organisation which believed in imposing Islamic law and promoting gender segregation…
HIKAM, which was also known by its Arabic name of Harakat Islah Shabaab Al Muslim (Movement to Reform Muslim Youth), was taken over during the late 1980s by Alam until it shut down around 1995.
A prominent Islamic scholar who had been involved in the group and who requested anonymity, told The Sunday Times that HIKAM also believed that minority Islamic sects such as the Shi’ites could not be regarded as true Muslims.
The source, who joined the group in the mid-1980s when it was first established, said: “It embraced a literalist, puritanical version of Islam and … was very sectarian in its approach.
“They were very strict on the segregation and … believed that everything has to be Islamised.”
The scholar added: “The group stood for establishing an Islamic state and Islamic rule and bringing about the caliphate [Islamic state]…”

 

Whys does the BBC hide so much information about Alam and his Islamist tendencies?

The BBC is seeking to hide Islamist links to these schools and downplay the likelihood that the ‘Torjan Horse’ plot is real….just as they ignored, then claimed the ‘Muslim Patrols’ might have been provocative ‘false flag’ operations.

But not only that…they seek to suggest that any such ‘Islamistation’, if it is happening, is in fact welcome:

‘Trojan Horse’ storm breaking over Birmingham’s schools

‘The so-called Trojan Horse document…..This was a letter, now widely assumed to be a forgery, claiming to detail a plot by Muslim conservatives to Islamicise secular state schools.’

BBC line….the letter is a forgery….talk of a plot is nonsense.

 

‘The Ofsted results also support the notion that this is really about a clique of governors.
The leaders of four of the schools expected to go into special measures are good friends, who speak a lot via WhatsApp, the mobile messaging app.’

BBC line….it’s just a small group of people…so nothing to really worry about…however read on and that is contradicted….the parents all love their Islamised schools apparently.

 

‘The idea that there is no wider conspiracy has support: people working in counter-extremism in Birmingham also do not think there is an acute broader problem in the city.’

BBC line….No wider conspiracy?  Again trying to limit this to a small group of fanatics..again…disproved by the BBC itself as above….’an Islamicised comprehensive school might seem like a neat option.

 

‘So this chapter of the story may be closing’.

BBC line…nothing to see here…no conspiracy, no radical Muslims, no threat to secular schools and society as a whole from a rampant Islam.

However…..the BBC goes on to promote the Islamisation of schools:

 

‘But there is a big structural issue worth considering: why do so many of the parents support the schools so much?

The English school system’s most important regulator is the attention of parents. Why, in this case, do they disagree with the authorities?

Witch-hunt fear

Partly, it is because some of these schools have been getting strong results. Partly, it is because there is fear of a witch-hunt – and the discourse around this reminds Muslims that they are not treated like people of other faiths.

Discussion of social conservatism among Jews or Catholics does not lead to talk of terrorism.
But it is also surely because Muslim parents do not have access to the same kind of state-funded faith education as parents of other creeds.

At the last school census, however, there were only eight officially designated Muslim state secondaries.    There are more than 300 Catholic secondaries.

No choice

So, for parents who want an education that reflects their own religion, an Islamicised comprehensive school might seem like a neat option.
With a growing Muslim population, this is an issue that will not go away.
Ofsted has no choice but to try to resecularise these schools. But one idea in the ether is that we should open more Muslim faith schools.
That would require a bold secretary of state, willing to defend the growth of faith schooling. It would also mean that schools would probably be more segregated by background.

Once you accept that certain schools are Islamic schools, you can then think about constructing a governing body with proper representation and management processes to prevent the problems in Birmingham.

Remember that parents are the first line of defence for the school system. And, at the moment, lots of them do not think lines in the sand drawn in Whitehall about the role of religion in our schools are worth defending.’

 

The BBC is promoting the Islamisation of schooling in Britain….a more dangerous and divisive notion would be hard to imagine.

Gove has been arguing for a broader definition of extremism, one that you  must expect would include faith schools and documents such as the MCB’s 2007 Islamist charter.

Unfortunately apparently he lost that argument and May’s narrower definition won the day…as well as a softer approach to tackling the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot.

The BBC tells us that:

“I  [Nick Robinson] understand that Michael Gove and Theresa May clashed at a recent meeting of what’s called the Extremism Task Force – a committee of cabinet ministers set up by David Cameron.

“They argued about how to define extremism. Mr Gove has long argued that Whitehall is too soft on extremism; that it only confronts people once they’ve turned to violence; that you should ‘drain the swamp’ and not wait for ‘the crocodiles to reach the boat’.

“At the meeting he argued for a broader definition. Mrs May, for a narrower one. She won.”

They also argued about how to handle the Trojan Horse allegations. He argued for an aggressive approach. She for a softer one. Again, I’m told, she won.

 

However we are also told:

But a Home Office source was blunt, telling the BBC: “The Department for Education is responsible for schools, the Home Office is not.”

“They have got a problem and they are trying to make it someone else’s problem,” the source added.

 

That doesn’t tally up does it?  Robinson reports that May won the argument about the approach to tackling the Trojan Horse plot….and yet the BBC also reports that the Home Office has no responsibility for that…but makes no comment on that contradiction.

And yet the BBC claim May is furious for Gove criticising her when it is his responsibility….

Home Secretary Theresa May has accused Education Secretary Michael Gove of failing to deal with an alleged Islamist plot to take over schools.’

Does that accusation stand up when the BBC also reports that May is the one who has decided hwo to tackle extremism in schools?

It looks like the BBC is more than happy to spin this story and make the most of it whilst it can.

 

For weeks the BBC has been trying to persuade us that the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot is much ado about nothing…the letter is a fake, the allegations without foundation….Muslims are  once again the subject of an Islamophobic witch hunt.

Yesterday that all changed…suddenly the plot is very real, Gove has been derelict in his duty in ignoring the peril, a peril he was informed about in 2010….and May and Gove have had stand up rows about this….according to ‘a Home Office Source’ who briefed against Gove….the Home Office source who happens to be Mays special advisor and who is in a relationship with them an Gove criticised….the Spad who was apparently nearly sacked on the spot for releasing the letter….the Telegraph says:   ‘It was this remarkable bit of escalation that detonated in Downing Street. It was so bad that consideration was given to sacking Ms Cunningham on the spot.’

The BBC’s Nick Robinson apparently mentioned the link on Today but dismissed it as of any importance…‘So there is a personal element, but let me stress: that’s not the key to this story.’…..clearly he was wrong.

 

 

The BBC is happy to Islamise schools it would seem…however that might just be the root of the problems…that acceptance of a slow creep of Islam into secular Britain forcing non-Muslims to adapt to Islam rather than Muslims to adapt to British culture and laws is a major problem..

Muslim faith schools lead only to segregation and possible extremism….the BBC’s Chris Cook admitted that in many schools where the majority of pupils are Muslim up to 90% only speak English as a second language…how can that be when they are mostly born here?

Norway’s capital to get first Muslim only school, to teach Arabic and Muslim values

“We spend a lot of money on inclusion in Norway, and now we are apparently going to be spending it on segregation.” the Labour chairman of Norway’s parliamentary education committee, Trond Giske, was quoted in the above mentioned report as saying.

 

In this video Cook claims the problem isn’t Islam but ‘extreme conservatism’…..of course that is Islamic conservatism….something Cook dismisses as irrelevant….’extreme conservatism can be problematic on its own’.

 

But is it just a small group of fanatics that want to Islamise the world as the BBC like to suggest?

I have met Muslim lawyers and academics who have turned to Taliban-style beliefs. These men propagate Wahhabism –  the joyless and backward Saudi belief system followed by
Al Qaeda and espoused by hate preachers such as omar Bakri and his successor
Anjem Choudary.

The rapid spread of rigid, diehard Islam is deeply worrying. Yet
those in power, focused on terrorist cells, seem oblivious to this other peril.
For many of us Muslims, this creeping Talibanisation of childhood is
unendurable.

I could never have imagined, nine years on, that the Taliban
would be claiming to have ‘won the war’ in Afghanistan. Or, much worse, that our
politicians and Muslim ‘leaders’ here would allow their twisted ideology to
spread across Britain. Make no mistake, Taliban devotees are in our schools,
playgrounds, homes, mosques, political parties, public service, private firms
and universities. And if we are to have any hope of combating them, we need to
stop this attitude of appeasement and understand why so many Muslims are
attracted to the most punishing forms of belief, suppressing women and children.

Why are we fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and indulging Taliban values here?

Even if it offends liberal principles, the powerful must find a way of stopping Islamicists from  promulgating their distorted creed.  If they don’t, the future is bleak for Muslims and the country.