Today’s Times reports that Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly announced yesterday that, as part of a wider government strategy to combat Muslim extremism, it has just created a new central government fund of £5 million with which to make grants to local councils for specific projects aimed at this objective.
According to the report, the kinds of project for which local authorities will receive money include those designed to work with young Muslims excluded from schools and mosques to prevent their becoming ‘groomed’ by extremists; assertiveness training for imams and Muslim women so they can ‘face down’ extremists [good luck on that one!]; new local forums for moderation with strong local leaders and role models; inter-faith school twinning programmes; and extra-training and information for local institutions such as mosques on how to spot and prevent extremist activity.
As potentially worthwhile as all such kind of local initiative might be, on the very same page as this news story is a second news report that suggests none of these initiatives is likely to have much effect in combating Islamic extremism until all government bodies, central and local, are willing to act on the powers that are already at their disposal to combat all forms of Islamic activity that promote hostility among Muslims towards non-Muslims which serves as the general seed-bed within which Islamist extremism flourishes.
This second news story concerns a Muslim school in Acton West London, named the King Fahd Academy, to which the nation’s attention was drawn last Monday night by a BBC Newsnight interview its presenter Jeremy Paxman gave to its head when he confronted her with the allegation of a former teacher there that it makes available to its young pupils Muslim texts in which Jews are described as monkeys and Christians as pigs.
In that interview, the head defended her school’s making such texts available, arguing the passages in them in question could only be thought of as conveying a derogatory message about Jews and Christians when ‘taken out of context ‘and understood in a language other than their original Arabic. Since that interview, the head, or whoever controls her school’s policies, has apparently bowed to public pressure. According to the second news report in today’s Times, it has removed the contentious learning material – literally, by cutting out the contentious half pages where it occurs.
The reason today’s news story about the King Fahd Academy shows that, to combat Muslim extremism, over and above whatever local authority initiatives the newly created central fund is to support, government bodies need to make much more effective use of the powers and instruments they already possess in this regard derives from what is said about the King Fahd Academy in the report of the Ofsted inspection it underwent last March.
Amongst the stated findings about the school from its inspection were that:
‘the nursery provides excellent opportunities for children to develop good behaviour and healthy lifestyles, fostering good personal and social and emotional development;
and it meets what is required of it for registration in connection with its pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development: ‘Relationships with other faiths and respect for other individuals are covered in Islamic studies lessons.’
Ofsted is the government body statutorily charged with the job of determining whether both state schools and independent schools should be allowed to operate. That, as recently as only last March, Ofsted gave a clean bill of health to this school in terms of what it taught its pupils about members of other faith groups is the real scandal behind this week’s story about it.
Incidentally, it would be wholly disingenuous on Ofsted’s part, or else display a singular lack of competence, for it to plead that it could not be expected to look at every one of the school’s text books, when it inspected the Academy. Stories had been circulating in the national press as early as 2004 as to how inappropriate its curriculum was and what a deprecatory view it gave of members of other faiths.
One article which appeared in the New Statesmen in April 2005, claims about what it calls this ‘Saudi-funded and Wahhabi-influenced’ school that: ‘former teachers and parents have criticised the academy’s religious teaching for instilling “hostility to the outsider” and for discriminating against girl students.’
Another report, published in the Daily Telegraph, in May 2004, quotes a former teacher at the school, who is also an Ofsted inspector, as saying of it: ‘As a teacher and an inspector of faith schools, I am interested in personal development and producing individuals who reflect deeply, self-evaluate and make a contribution to society. A Saudi education is not going to create individuals who make that kind of contribution in a free society.’
If Ofsted could have inspected the school in March 2006 unaware of these claims made about it in the national press less than a year before, then more fool it.
The pigs at that school might temporarily have been safely held at bay, but whilst schools like it can receive clean bills of health from the very government bodiy charged with determining their fitness for purpose, it seems likely it won’t be long before they reappear on the curriculum in some other guise.
It also suggests that Ofsted is in urgent need of inspection to evaluate its fitness for purpose. To quote that old Latin tag: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes .
Comments (4)
I don't believe that there is a 'takeover' bid underway by the Muslim community in the UK. If anything, this is merely a step in the direction of equality amongst those of Muslim faith (of whom some are born in this nation and are thus just as 'British' as you are). If anything, there are extremists on either side of the faith divide, and, in terms of potential danger, if I were a young muslim Male (especially one of colour), I think that I would then have far more to be worried about than my own young, white male situation. The longer this 'us/them' situation continues, the longer will it be until we can actually realise that people can live within a multi-faith nation without fear of prejudice. Moreover, free trade leads to movement in trade goods, not necessarily people. Nothing in the definition of free trade dictates such an occurrence.
Posted by archie | October 31, 2008 3:03 PM
Posted on October 31, 2008 15:03
i'M OF THE MIND THAT GOVERNMENT AND POLITICIANS IN GENERAL COLLUDE WITH ADHERENTS OF ISLAM IN THEIR ATTEMPT TO TAKE-OVER THIS COUNTRY.
IT'S NOT NUMBERS BUT WHO IT IS THAT CONTROLS
EVERYTHING, OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS ISLAM IS TAKING CONTROL.
CITIES ARE OVER-RUN WITH MUSLIMS ACROSS EUROPE, EVEN THE ROMANS ALL THOSE YEARS AGO KNEW TO GAIN CONTROL OF CITIES WAS THE KEY TO CONTROLLING THE POPULATION.
OUR POLITICIANS OBVIOUSLY KNOW THIS ALSO AND HAVE ALLOWED IT TO GO ON.
I HAD THOUGHT THE EU/ARAB DIALOGUE WAS A MYTH BUT AFTER MUCH RESEARCH IT'S NO MYTH.
2010 THE EU HAVE AGREED TO GIVE FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS WITH 9 MORE MUSLIM COUNTRIES THIS LEADS TO FREE MOVEMENT.
THE 1995 BARCELONA DECLARATION SIGNED BY MALCOLM RIFKIN MAKING THE TORIES JUST AS GUILTY.
A SELL OUT OF EUROPE AND THE UK FOR OIL.
TREACHERY IS THE CHARGE AGAINST OUR RULING ELITE THIS INCLUDES HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN.
Posted by SALLY | September 7, 2007 4:20 PM
Posted on September 7, 2007 16:20
I would just like to expand on my last post.
Treating radical Muslims like some wayward school children by throwing goodies in the form of more public money at them is a soft option.
The threat from extreme Islam is in my view as a big a threat to this country as were the Nazis in the 20th century. I speak with some knowledge, as I have spent the last 30 years living in a town with a large Muslim population.
I have watched the Muslim community grow from a small quiet minority, to a noisy demanding community of whom the extremists have exactly the same aims and ambitions of Nazi Germany.
The methods employed to achieve domination are somewhat more subtle.
This Government is either unwilling to face this problem or refuses to understand the magnitude of radical Islam.
Mike.
Posted by Mike | February 11, 2007 11:20 AM
Posted on February 11, 2007 11:20
Appeasement will not work. Clearly Ruth Kelly does not understand the mindset of the people with whom we are dealing.
Mike.
Posted by Mike | February 9, 2007 3:28 PM
Posted on February 9, 2007 15:28