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The minister for Hizb ut Tahrir

5 December 2009

The Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, continues to deny that Islamist extremism is being taught in state-funded schools. Here, Andrew Gilligan shows him the indisputable evidence

By one of those bizarre coincidences, I bumped into Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, on Tuesday night, just after I had accused him in print of being ‘the minister for Hizb ut Tahrir’. Quite extraordinarily, Mr Balls has spent much of the past seven days defending two primary schools run by supporters of this deeply nasty, racist and segregationist group after the Tories attacked his department’s decision to give them £113,000 of public money.

As you might expect, our meeting was brief. Mr Balls said I was disgraceful. I said I fully reciprocated the charge: Minister for Hizb ut Tahrir, while harsh, was entirely justified by the facts in this case. ‘No evidence has been found that extremist views are being taught. Give me the evidence,’ said Balls. Well, here it is, minister. Are these views ‘extremist’ enough for you?

The main evidence that Mr Balls has made a massive blunder is a chapter in a Hizb ut Tahrir pamphlet, ‘Education and Identity’, written by one Farah Ahmed. Mrs Ahmed is the head teacher of one of the two schools, and also a trustee of the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation (ISF), which runs them both. If I were a Muslim parent, I would not let my child within 20 miles of her.

In her chapter ‘The Western Education System and the British National Curriculum’, Mrs Ahmed attacks the religious studies elements of the national curriculum for ‘primarily push[ing] ...the idea of “religious tolerance”.’ This, she says, ‘further aids distancing the Muslim child from the concept of Islam being the only reference point.’

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Comments Post comment

David Burns

December 3rd, 2009 8:18am Report this comment

"Inspectors gave the schools plenty of notice"

Ofsted Note
"From January 2008, we will be shortening the notice period for subject and aspect survey inspections to one week for secondary schools. One week is usually enough notice as most subjects will be taught somewhere in the school each day. Primary schools notice will remain at two weeks. This takes into account that some subjects may not be taught each week and allows for flexibility."

Need I say more?

M. Rowley

December 3rd, 2009 10:18am Report this comment

The sad truth is that this government has been cosying up to Islamic extremism for many years, and the example you cite is but one of many.

May I suggest that another area which would be ripe for your investigatory skills is the whole 'PREVENT' agenda, which has would you believe, police forces accommodating some pretty unpleasant bed-fellows in the belief that if you get alongside radical Muslims, then perhaps they just might not try to kill us.

Stuart Seacole Smith

December 3rd, 2009 4:27pm Report this comment

Deary deary me. The usual Balls up. I really do despair a bit about where all this is going:
- failure by an unacceptably large portion of muslims to integrate both in the UK, and across Western Europe, causing misery for both the muslim population, and wider society as a whole
- muslim bodies actively campaigning against desperately needed progress towards improving their integration, and even cynically targetting the very children who will need to lead the way in normalising relations between the muslim minorities and broader society, if this is ever to be achieved.

And this situation being coupled to a government that fails to acknowledge or act to tackle this dangerous dichotomy.

Actually, if you were to take each point made by Farah Ahmed and vigorously pursue a precisely opposite strategy you might just start to get things going in the right direction.

Something's got to give. I believe the Swiss minaret hoo-ha is an indicator of the broader unease, and even anger, that is beginning to fester across Western Europe over muslim (lack of) integration. Western governments remain noticeably out-of-step with what seems to be the majority of their electorates.

So what's going to give? I for one, really don't know.

Merlyn

December 3rd, 2009 5:14pm Report this comment

The cozying up of our Home Office, AND the Foreign office to Muslim preferences is only about oil.
We are bankrupt, and about to be more so as more money is drained from us one way or another.
It is time to find alternate modes of energy production, [ what about green algae?]....
this is not about global warming... its about finding respect for ourselves as well as the planet... it works both ways!

Robert Slack

December 3rd, 2009 5:32pm Report this comment

Surely we should ban ALL religious indoctrination in all schools; young children cannot make their own choices. It is disgraceful, utterly reprehensible, that we do it. The examples quoted may be amongst the worst, and there is little doubt that some versions of Islam are abhorrent, but we should regard all indoctrination of children is unacceptable (in a free society).

The comments about fairy tales made me laugh.

elainepriscilla

December 3rd, 2009 5:49pm Report this comment

We must do something about this urgently before it goes too far. Religion should be taught in the home not at school. I went to a school with mixed religions and they divided us up in to different faiths and this divded the children up as well not learning from each other how to live together in peace..
When will the government get this right before it is too late.

Gobic

December 10th, 2009 8:44pm Report this comment

Andrew Gilligan says that Ofsted found no evidence of extremist teaching because they didn't look for it, but since he maintains that there was, it is up to him to provide the evidence, which he has failed to do. Quoting people and publications is one thing, showing actual e

Gobic

December 10th, 2009 8:45pm Report this comment

Andrew Gilligan says that Ofsted found no evidence of extremist teaching because they didn't look for it, but since he maintains that there was, it is up to him to provide the evidence, which he has failed to do. Quoting people and publications is one thing, showing actual evidence is another. And Ofsted inspectors are not as naive as he would have us believe, despite what went wrong in Haringey.

JK

December 13th, 2011 5:28pm Report this comment

Isn't the British govt made up of a nasty racist segregationist bunch who refuse to integrate into the EU?

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