Birmingham schools are not at the centre of a Muslim extremist stealth plot to radicalise pupils and claims of a Trojan Horse-type takeover are without foundation, city council chief executive Mark Rogers has insisted.
Mr Rogers attempted to defuse critical media coverage over the issue by insisting investigations have failed to uncover any conspiracy by hardline Islamists to infiltrate classrooms.
In his first major interview since starting the top council job, Mr Rogers told Chamberlain Files that there were issues in some schools, but this did not involve radicalisation. He believed “new communities” in Birmingham were simply looking for the same educational environment for their children that they would get in the country they came from.
There were certain “customs and practices” these communities wanted to see that did not always fit in with the national curriculum that exists in Britain. They were asking “legitimate questions” about the type of schooling they wanted for their children and how that could fit in with the “liberal education system” we have in this country.
Dutch politician Geert Wilders has once again become the subject of controversy after he led supporters in an anti-Moroccan chant during a campaign rally last month. Despite the mass condemnation he has received for the remarks, Wilders’ anti-Muslim counterparts in the United States are standing by his draconian approach to immigration.
“Arun Kundnani’s book, vastly more intelligent than the usual ‘war on terror’ verbiage, focuses on the war’s domestic edge in Britain and America. His starting point is this: ‘Terrorism is not the product of radical politics but a symptom of political impotence.’ The antidote therefore seems self-evident: ‘A strong, active and confident Muslim community enjoying its civic rights to the full.’ Yet policy on both sides of the Atlantic has ended by criminalising Muslim opinion, silencing speech and increasing social division. These results may make political violence more, not less, likely.”
Ken Livingstone today threw his support behind the controversial Mayor of Tower Hamlets after a BBC Panorama investigation into his administration. The former Labour Mayor of London defended Lutfur Rahman’s record since he became the borough’s first directly-elected Mayor after beating a Labour rival in 2010.