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 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.

‘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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzjWaiOQfQw

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.

Monday morning arrives and so does a NEW Open Thread for your completion. Over to you….

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 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.

As has been pointed out to me, the BBC is leading its WORLD NEWS this evening as I write this at 22.31pm with Labour’s demand that Theresa May MUST apologise re the Gove spat. Now I am sure this may change and the link will be out of date but here is the screenshot that indicates a certain…shall we say…. BIAS?

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?

Biased BBC reader Alex notes…

“Take a look at this pointless but all-too-typical pro-EU, left-wing drivel from the BBC that seeks to undermine English identity: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27731725 Now, repeat after me folks: England, unlike Scotland, never has been a unified country, but rather a mix of divided counties. Therefore, multiculturalism and the devolution of English counties is a good thing.”

I have been contacted by Saif Rahman with regard to this article he has written about BBC favourite Mehdi Hasan. I commend it to you…

“He is the UK’s political director of the Huffington Post, appears regularly on BBC’s Question Time, has 122,000 followers on Twitter and a monthly Al-Jazeera TV slot (a channel that boasts broadcasting to 40-60 million people daily in the Arab world).

And anyone who knows me will be aware that I’ve always been keen to expose poor role models within the Muslim community.  Recently we delivered the coup de grace to Muhammad Ansar, the media’s favourite Muslim “public commentator” resulting in the viral #MoCV hashtag, after he had been falsifying claims of being a lawyer, lecturer, community leader, an imam etc. Although he’s not quite in the same league, I would argue Mehdi is more harmful & pernicious.  Unlike MoAnsar’s scrappiness which led to his ultimate demise, Mehdi is wary about the spats he chooses to engage in and his slicker performance lends him a free pass from our generally forgiving public.  It’s about reading between the lines.

I tried to find a journalist to unravel Mehdi and despite offering to help in this endeavour, not a single journalist was willing to take it on.  Journalists are a tighter knit community than I first expected. Few are willing to poop on their own doorstep and even fewer are willing to take on an influential media man with a large following. I came to the conclusion Mehdi was untouchable. Or almost, until i decided to write it myself.”

Do read the rest from Saif, great stuff and I think it is a sound insight into the mindset of one of the BBC’s ‘go-to” guys.  I have debated Medhi on the BBC and found him OK if a touch strident but on Twitter he is plain nasty, full of himself and arrogant beyond words. I find much truth in what Saif says. Do read the full article on the Link.