Ep.71 - Islamophobia and the Trojan Horse Affair with Tahir Alam
Back in the early 2000’s, a group of Muslim parents led by Tahir Alam decided they were no longer going to tolerate poor outcomes for Muslim pupils in Alam Rock, Birmingham. They were going to proactively break the decades of underperformance and social depravation that came from it and challenge the prevailing narrative in the world of educationalists and local politicians that young, largely Pakistani students were destined to occupy the bottom strata of society. Aspiration was a privilege they could never have a share in. Tahir set about deconstructing these social barriers and within time he and his colleagues, who volunteered to join school governorships of Birminghams deprived schools, had miraculously turned things around. Schools that were the worst in terms of attainment were now consistently achieving enviable pass rates.
In the processes, Tahir won plaudits from school authorities, local politicians and within time earned the respect of national educational bodies and politicians. He was called upon to help other governing bodies, steer committees and advise on education policy. At the core of his success was to make disenfranchised students feel a sense of belonging, and that in part meant being aware of and open to facilitating their cultural and religious practises. Such an approach was not new, education theorists have for years suggested that students that have a stake in the system do better. However, in a post-9/11 world, Tahir’s forthright views that schools should be a place where Muslim students should be allowed to be Muslim, also raised concerns. The new conservative government had come to the view that Islam as a practised faith was an obstacle, and austere or so-called conservative interpretations of Islam were part of a broader extremist threat.
At the forefront of this divisive approach was the education secretary Michael Gove, who as a journalist had written an incoherent polemical book, Celsius 7/7– arguing that there was a Islamist plot to undermine Britain. Gove saw his chance to unravel the good work of Muslim educationalists, after a discredited letter, now known as the Trojan Horse letter, was anonymously sent to Birmingham council in 2014. Among its salacious claims, it revealed that Tahir was at the head of an ‘Islamist’ plot to take over schools and prepare them for extremist views. The rest, as they say is history. The letter, discredited on multiple occasions as a work of malicious fantasy, was embraced by Gove and the department of education and within time, Tahir and dozens of Muslim governors and teachers were barred from education.
The Trojan Horse affair upended education policy in the UK and gave rise to one of the most problematic policies, the prevent duty. If you haven’t already, The New York Times Serial podcast on the subject is worth a listen – Tahir and his colleagues were vindicated as concerned parents caught up in a systematic programme of islamophobia.
Riaz Hasan and Muhammad Jalal caught up with Tahir Alam - the man at the centre of the scandal - to try to understand the broader motivations of government and others hell bent on tuning back the tide of young Muslim achievement and in the process stoking Islamophobia.
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"If you are a muslim parent or a muslim governor and you make noise
you risk actually being part of the trojan horse plot and exhibiting behaviors
which are indicative of the trojan horse plot."
Back in the early 2000s a group of muslim parents led by taher alam decided they were no longer going to tolerate poor outcomes for muslim pupils in alum rock birmingham they were going to proactively break the decades of underperformance and social
deprivation that came from it and challenged the prevailing narrative in
the world of educationalists and local politicians a narrative that young largely pakistani
students were destined to occupy the bottom strata of society
aspiration was a privilege they could never have a share in taher set about deconstructing these
social barriers and within time he and his colleagues who volunteered to join school governorships of birmingham's
deprived schools had miraculously turned things around schools that were the worst in terms of
attainment were now constantly achieving enviable pass rates in this process tahirah won plaudits
from school authorities and local politicians and within time earned the respect of national educational bodies
and national politicians he was called upon to help other governing bodies steer committees and
advise on education policy at the core of his success was to make disenfranchised students
feel a sense of belonging and that in part meant being aware of
and open to facilitating their cultural and religious practices such an approach was not new education
theorists have for years suggested for students that have a stake in the system
do much better however in a post-9 11 world taher is forthright views that schools should be
a place where muslim students should be allowed to be muslim also raised concerns
the new conservative government had come to the view that islam as a practice faith was in itself an obstacle and
austere or so-called conservative interpretations of islam were part of a
broader extremist threat at the forefront of this divisive
approach was the education secretary michael gove who as a journalist had
written an incoherent polemical work arguing that there was an islamist plot
to undermine britain gove saw his chance to unravel the good work of muslim educationalists
after a discredited letter now known as the trojan horse letter was anonymously
sent to birmingham council in 2014. amongst its salacious claims it revealed
that taher was at the head of an islamist plot to take over schools and prepare them for extremist views
the rest as they say is history the letter discredited on multiple occasions
as a work of malicious fantasy was embraced by michael gove and the department of education and within time
taher and dozens of muslim governors and teachers were barred from education
the trojan horse affair upended education policy in the uk and gave rise
to one of the most problematic policies the prevent policy a subject of the next show
if you haven't already the new york times serial podcast on the subject is worth a listen
taher and his colleagues were vindicated as concerned parents caught up in a
systematic program of islamophobia riaz hassan and i caught up with taher to try
to understand the motivations of government and others hell-bent on turning back the tide of young muslim
achievement and in the process stoking islamophobia
bravata jazakallah for joining us today on the thinking muslim podcast
i know you've already given a number of interviews since the new york times serial podcast and i don't really want
to repeat the very good discussions you've already had i would like our listeners or i'd like to refer our
listeners to a very good podcast the islamic podcast where i think you raised some really
interesting uh discussion points and it's worth it's worth for our listeners to to to
have a look at that but today i want to possibly look at some of the broader let's say political issues that come out
of the serial podcast and and that i think need further discussion
or elaboration but i suppose before we start can you summarize your feelings since
for serial podcast revelations um and investigation uh do you feel a sense of personal
vindication tahir i contributed to this particular podcast
which began some four years ago and it took rather a long time to produce and
they came to see me number of times just putting facts to me sometimes challenging me on things and sometimes
asking you know difficult questions to me as well because they were quite objective actually and they asked me
some very tough questions on record if you like you know they were recording on those things
and so when the podcast uh cast came out um i mean i was i was uh i have to say i
was surprised the extent to which actually they managed to take this particular investigation
um and the various uh revelations that came to light and uh what the podcast actually uh
shows quite vividly is the entire islamophobic context in
which all of these events actually took place i think they really bring that out
very succinctly and very clearly and evidentially as well that you know very sensible very
reasonable very objective uh view of you know or handling of these
uh situations would normally have resulted in something very different
and people over asked the relevant questions you know they would have been
they would have exercised their right to not to believe if you know what i mean but instead what happened was that
whatever people were fed by a fish of them if you like uh the media absorbed that without
questioning it uh and of course obviously the government agencies that are involved including ofsted and the
appointment of the anti-terror chief cop actually uh peter clark and so
on that set the tone for the whole um you know the offensive or the attack
against our schools it set the tone and everybody seemed to have sort of just followed the tone without
uh actually questioning uh from a journalistic point of view or from agencies which were independent
uh you know of of of government you know at least on paper for example austin for our
listeners ofsted being the government schools inspector uh they came in and that they were fulfilling uh kind of a
from what i could tell you know a predetermined agenda they did not go about the business as they normally would and so on so i have
from the outset always from the beginning my position has always been consistent
and that's because it's based on truth and that's what maintains the consistency of the position i've never altered what i've said and i've never
regarded and i say at the time when i was the chair of the trust that i had uh
and that i did not regard these these uh investigations nor the reports
to be fair or credible and i've said that very consistently so most of these
kind of allegations that are printed in the media for example they've been a few articles recently
uh just repeating old things that were being circulated just allegations not facts allegations being
circulated and i do feel a sense of vindication actually or not a complete vindication
obviously because i can still remain barred from working education so that blight if you like is still that's um
is is still on my sort of character and on my sort of position uh so that's very real so but
nonetheless what the podcast shows actually is the uh is the fallacious nature
of the whole offensive against our schools but it was never justified and the witnesses that
have been brought forward uh you know they were pursued clark report report was analyzed and they showed you know
the huge gaps and uh something that obviously i've known for uh i mean that's not news to
me that's something that always argued from the beginning but nonetheless uh they brought about it you know much more
evidentially by cross-checking by corroborating and by verifying uh
witness testimonies and so on and uh you know what came out you know from my point of view was was very
positive and i do feel a sense of indication and therefore um i am
actively speaking to to to challenge the narrative
that became a social reality sorry what do you mean by a narrative that became a social reality
and when i say social reality what i mean is that as described by professor holmod that
there was the initial you know hype around the allegations you know jihadists taking over schools extremists
taking over schools rather radicals taking over schools you know and
extremist teaching in schools there was the initial fantastic headlines that we had
and of course when the investigations were done all of the investigations in fact not one of
them found any evidence of there being a conspiracy or a plot
no evidence even according to clarke as an example who is the anti-terror
even according to him there's no evidence found of any extremism radicalization
um you know or terrorism of any description whatsoever although he does mislead uh in his report
uh actually means he does put very misleading and distorted entries which actually falsify the reality uh through
a mission and sometimes through distortion but nonetheless he concluded that there was no plot uh and that
there's no sort of uh you know conspiracy uh in that way he says something there was
something less than that but nonetheless no extremism so when i went for my borrowing order of course there's no
allegations of me anything any kind of extremist activity taking place within our schools
whatsoever full stop no such allegations have been made against me uh
but in the public uh mind if you like more broadly more
socially there is an image you know left
uh in view of the hype and the five and a half six months campaign in the media
you know full blast media you know vans and everything outside and every day it's in the news and uh and in print
media in screen media social media and so on so so there is a kind of a social
reality to the idea that you know there's no smoke without fire something must have happened you know we
can't what can they what they didn't find any extremism whatever but there must be something wrong you know there's
something not right about whole thing so that act that image has kind of that
narrative um you know has become sort of accepted or cemented
uh in the minds of people in a wider society and people who are distant from
from the truth as it were and who don't know more details uh so i think the podcast has been very
positive in that sense it it shown a light on the extent to which there is islamophobia in this country
uh you know is uh has come out very clearly and
the evidence base that was used against us of course and the laziness of general journalism the laziness of the court
system for example and the and the belligerent uh denial of uh disclosures
and then the threats and so on so a lot of department of education disclosures have still not been made they are
refusing to do that so for example i'll give you a very simple example i have i went to court i simply
requested that the meeting minutes uh so the the the
minutes of the meeting held between michael gove and albert ball should be given as a
disclosure in my case because uh my argument was that these after inspections
and these reports that you're relying upon particularly after inspections they were lying on officer inspections more than the others in my case
and i said these inspections uh were done within a state of moral panic
and that these inspections were also commissioned by the secretary of state for education
and that uh that they were sort of islamophobic in nature because of the
trojan horse letter and the context that it created the prison political and the
media storm that it created so all these things they happen with this within this very
contaminated context and therefore none of these uh
reports uh were fair and we had evidence to obviously back that up not just making that particular claim but there
are other things like for example when the first inspection happened
right against all precedents you know i've never heard of that myself i'm an officer inspector myself
i've worked for the department of education as national leader of governance as the governance expert if you like one of the governor's experts
in the country supporting other schools um so i'm very familiar with these things but i never but i suppose
technically that could be done but it was very unusual after doing the inspection they did not
put the school into special measures meaning their failure of the school they didn't put into a special category which means that
uh special category is the worst category and and when you put a school into special categories the important
thing is that it gives right to the secretary of state for education to then to intervene when the first inspection
happened on the fourth fifth of uh march 2014 the then inspector because this is an
outstanding school is something you have to appreciate it's not easy to take down a school which has got all measures
in the top category of one one one and one outstanding for everything when did
when did you reach outstanding status with ofsted it was in 2012 inspection
under the new framework and what led behind that outstanding uh accreditation by by ofsted
it was the school was obviously uh you know performing academically delivering the
achievement for the children was the main factor apart from the fact that we had very uh
very uh you know a very um supportive culture within the school
very good working relationship with parents and um and we give a sense of vision to
the children of themselves in the future so they were kind of motivated because motivating young people is one of the
biggest challenges that we have quite frankly you can't motivate them to do anything apart from sit in front of the
games and things like that so it's a challenge but it's something that we kind of became quite good at over a
period of time you know we had very good people and i don't wish to claim credit for myself there was very lot of excellent
people actually who did you know work on the cold face as it were and uh who made enormous contributions and sacrifices to
achieve those things yeah you had a 75 percent pass rate i believe in 2014.
that's right yes i the results had been consistently in the 70s for the last four years from 2009
you know 71 72 75 73 uh we were yeah we were right up there and what was it
before tahoe when i the funny thing about my involvement in this school actually the irony of it
and um is that when i joined this school in 1997
uh 7th of january 1997 in fact the school results were four percent and
the school was in special measures meaning it was a failing school special measures
and then when the day i left the school on the 15th of july 2014
the school had results of i think 72 for that particular year if i remember
and the school was also in special measures so it says something about ofsted i
think more than anything else for those people who can reflect and think that a school with four percent in this
inspection measures the school with 75 is in special measures what lay behind this pretty radical
shift in in in grade improvements i mean what did you and the governing body do to to turn
this school around um it's number of things really it's difficult to pinpoint one thing but we
did have an approach uh which we consistently pursued all the way and one of this particular approach
was that it was a belief in the fact that these children
destiny was not to actually educationally fail we wanted to break the via this motto
which said if i remember correctly now that we want to break the link between deprivation and destiny
between deprivation and destiny so this is in a alamark area you know
high levels of unemployment a high kind of crime rate you might say and all the other factors that
contribute to children under achieving nationally uh so we want you to break that link and
this is the motto we had and uh so we established that you know these children can achieve as well as
anybody else could and that's a principle that we always followed through in every meeting in every target
setting exercise in our communications with when we recruited teachers we would talk about
these kind of things so that we were developing a very high expectation for the children but at that
point when you joined the governing body and and you know you saw these results of four
percent what was contributing to um the failure of
students what what was inhibiting their progress uh beyond those very low standards yeah
you ask a very important question actually um there was an acceptance that these children couldn't achieve much higher
than that in fact the teachers the attitude of many of the teachers not
all of them obviously many of the teachers was that we were doing a great job for them because these
children come from the foothills of pakistan as one of the teachers said to me what do you expect these children to
achieve when they come from the foothills of pakistan yeah meaning they are village people uneducated people
you know uh and and you can't have high expectations of them they can't achieve uh great
things you can't expect all of them to go to university and stuff like that there was this kind of an accepted culture that they could not
achieve so the school didn't feel you know that they were failing the children in one sense they kind of were
comfortable with it is what i found when i went in there the other thing interesting things that
i discovered when i became the chair of the governing body in the first meeting which is rather unusual very odd thing
to happen actually but anyway um so when i went into the school
the first three occasions interestingly when i went into the school i observed three fights
so maybe that's just a coincidence you know it's the only fight or maybe they were waiting for me as soon as i walked in
there'd be a fight so i observed three fights and the teachers were somewhat
embarrassed because the chair of governors is coming in and he's coming three times and there's three fights and
one of them chairs are being thrown around um so so scuffles you know
broke out and one of them was quite nasty actually because the children started showing that throwing the chairs around and there was like a proper punch
up between two um groups of children anyway and um
so so the school was kind of very neglected uh in that sense really i went into i
remember one activity which i did i said i cannot be shown around the school so um
so the deputy had kindly uh showed me around so he got his keys and things and he
went around so i just walked around the school and then the one of the first things we came to
actually was the toilets i said can i go into the toilets semi-strong these are student toilets
the staff toilets are elsewhere so you can go over there and say no no i want to see the student toilets
because the toilets speak volumes about school you know they say they say a lot about a school so i said no i want to
see that say i haven't got the keys mr allen i said kindly please just get the keys and i'll have a look at them
so anyway he went away and got the keys and i went inside five toilets on the right hand side
only one of them has a seat um and uh and only one of them has a seat and only
one of them has a lock all the other locks are broken all the other seats are broken
and they're not really usable and they stink absolutely stink
and so and there is water everywhere you know children have been made a mess everywhere kind of thing
and that's what i saw really and so um so how did we improve the school is what you're asking me
so that was probably one of the first actions that i did in improving the school so i said to the deputy and i
said uh you know why are the toilets in this condition he said mr alam if we
repair them next week we'll be same position again the seats will be broken lux will be broken and there's graffiti
on the wall everywhere he said it'd be the same again so we don't put them on we just keep one thing work we just keep
one toilet basically functional and the others we don't repair them this is what they apparently were doing
anyway i said look i want these toilets in complete functional um
uh arrangement here all the time i said if they break it twice in the week
you put them on twice in the week okay simple so we're not gonna accept that so you
just put them on so he said okay fair enough then so then they basically started doing that
because you see the reason why this is not this is not a minor point this is a very major point for children to
flourish in a setting in a school environment the social context
and the aspiration that kind of draws out are very very important
any child that comes to that school and goes to that kind of totally they see that they're not gonna have a high
expectation of themselves because it's a humiliating situation we are humiliating the children so you
improve the facilities of the school you change the way the children were perceived by the
teachers you improved uh the expectations for teachers and and the governing and the
governing body and and the uh senior leadership team had of students but i suppose the the
accusation that was that old to me led to your resignation and bar from volunteering at uh at a school level was
that you promoted and facilitated islam at parkview academy uh and i suppose in the context of you
know the war on terror and sort of the hysteria that that surrounds islam in in
public discourse that must have raised alarm bells um especially after this fraudulent
trojan horse letter made its rounds um what lay behind this approach of yours to
facilitate islam in in your school actually the important um
uh sort of principle that we had was that if children are confident in themselves
they will do well in school so they must have self-confidence self-worth self-value
and a sense of ambition then can be instilled in them to do well and to to to be able to do that
they have to be comfortable in their own skin comfortable in their own skin which
means that you have to value their background and whether it is a racial background
whether it is a religious background whatever their background is they have to be made to feel comfortable in relation to uh who
they are and that will engender greater confidence in them and so this is something that we
valued and our school is 99 percent children outside in the school 99 of the
children were of the muslim faith
so we obviously catered for we began to cater for those children
uh we applied for a determination and all of the things that we included actually within their school
they were you know very much in line with regulations and when compliant
and no not at all and not at all even to the end that we've never we didn't do that
we were we were operating within the realm of the regulations and so on so we
applied for a determination uh part determination so we have began to offer islamic collective worship which is part
of a statutory requirement uh which was later criticized by clark because of his ignorance uh about the
legal requirements and so on he thought that was going above and beyond but obviously he didn't know any of the
legal stuff really so he thought this was not right um and uh so we made provision for children
to pray in school for example we built woozle facilities for them so they don't make a mess in the toilets that you will
remember so that the water doesn't go on the floor everywhere creating health and safety so we will with some proper
facilities for them to be able to do that and we try to create a culture of
respect really for for for the cultural background of the children quite frankly what we were not trying to do was to
save these children from the oppression of islam i want to be very clear about that okay
because there is that kind of mindset there as well so we were not trying to do that we were just trying to do
accommodate the needs of the children you know based on parental demands and the people that we were actually serving
now this is very normal and was normal and quite acceptable you know during that period and even beyond that period
as well this is nothing odd about that at all riaz yes when did this start to
change or when did the perceptions of the authority start to change about the school because on the one hand um i read
in the serial and in other places that the school was being uh shown as a beacon of hope for inner
city schools and was the exemplar uh institute for many of things in terms of
how you turn around a school um so this aspect of islam that you talk about
in the school was this always present was this um kind of ignored at first and then was it kind of
highlighted later to kind of lambaste the school or how did that kind of uh
series of events unfold and you know what was the turning point really if you look at the ofsted inspections of
parkview prior to the interventions in 2014 if you read 2012 report if you read
the one before that and so on you will find that all these practices including islamic collective worship and
the way we cater for the children and the community that we are serving and and and so on all those things the
spiritual moral social and cultural development of the children all of those things are highly praised
okay they're all highly praised in the report so they're not something new they're not hidden or anything we always
made a point of showing that inspectors and they always praised them
as being excellent practices which benefited the children okay what is good for the children is what's important in
a school and they said this was good for the children and they flourished in this environment
and and we had the evidence base for that obviously with the academic outcomes uh as well as outcomes in terms
of their spiritual moral social and cultural development because education is not simply about academic education
no that's not education education is about the development of the whole child you know how we prepare them to be
a successful human being if you like you know in the world and relate to other
people and not just serve themselves but be able to serve other people too
um to be a good human beings to be a good neighbor and so on so all those things were very important in the school
and we try to inculcate and develop those things uh within the children so all these things were praised
um i suppose you're saying to me well what was the shift if you like you know at what point did it happen in what ways
did it happen i mean what i can sort of a few things i can say about that
one is that there was a government change and there's a policy change
that the due diligence for example
extremist units extremism units were set up in the department for education um you know particularly after the
conservative government came into power michael gove had responsibility for education and we know his views of
course about islam and muslims and so on and uh and in his book celsius 7 7 he should be
quite clear that what he believes so he had a very different way of looking at things and um
and at the same time of course the government changed some policies in schools being uh were encouraged or
rather forced in many cases actually to become academies so there's an openness agenda as well
that things should open up and uh the free schools program was also
set up as well where people could parents and community could get together and open new schools so these were new
things that were being introduced into the education system so as part of that
of course we became an academy in 2012
and when we converted we were invited then by the department for education
to apply not for an individual conversion of the academy uh which was the parkview school but they wanted us
to become a multi-academy trust so that we could
support other schools this is at their suggestion not our suggestion so we then applied for a multi-academy
trust which was fast-tracked through and we were given the multi-academy status
we then we then secretary of state uh michael gove at the time uh so he signed on this um
uh take over our school uh the the plot is that these guys are taking over schools are you with me
so there's a plot and they're taking over schools and so on and islamizing them but all these signatures
my go signatures are on those papers and my signatures are on those papers
so we've been given those tools the irony of it yeah and you know the the fallacious nature of peter clark's
report the dishonesty of people to report is that none of the things i'm saying to you now are documented
anywhere they are on dfe records they're papers signed and he doesn't he doesn't want to talk
about any of those things he doesn't want to mention those things because because he kind of um
it it's it hinders the conclusion that he wants to arrive at we as a muslim community are often accused of being
conspiratorial in many ways and thinking there's agendas behind everything
but on this issue it seems as if you know you're being accused of a plot but it seems
that the plot is the other way around there seems to be a plot nor an agenda against um you know muslim values in school if
you like or you're the muslim attainment or attainment of muslims in these schools so do you think it was that do
you think that the authorities were looking for an example to be made out of a certain school or a certain locality i
think that what actually i mean there are a number of things that happen really i can't say whether
um how people were thinking really uh that's a bit of a stretch really but i
think what what is important um is that there was a shift in policy
and um and it was not envisaged as part of that shift it was not envisaged that muslims
might end up establishing free schools and establishing academy multi-academy chains that they will run those schools
so this is an idea that i think didn't sit well with uh you know islamophobes if you
like people who have very prejudicial views about muslims like michael gove you know who has a
record of working with um a campaign organization on these issues uh
policy exchange and so on uh so he had those kind of views anyway
but nonetheless it was not envisaged i think so when uh i suppose you know whatever triggered
it there was one or two complaints and things like that that that went in whatever and those complaints would normally have been
handled you know in a in a normal scenario the complaints would be handled you know by contacting
the academy and we will then respond to those complaints those sort of things happen all the time they're just normal
things that happen in any school okay so somebody complains you write to the academy and say we have received this
complaint can you please respond to these issues we want to be assured that there is no uh you know serious issue
here and if you need to rectify things you should rectify them and that'll be the end of the matter that's a normal way of kind of
addressing issues and concerns that raised within the school so these issues uh you know may well
have been raised and one or two i'm aware of were raised and uh
so so so they were there really but what actually in the circumstances that
uh i suppose catapulted or caused the explosion although uh you know the particle the paraffin
particles were already uh in the air in some density
so it took a little bit of a sparkly to create an explosion so the islamophobic atmosphere had
already been created for a while you know the demonization of the muslim community uh
press coverage 85 percent of the articles run you know were are negative according to the
research done in a few years a couple of years ago so the atmosphere i know a couple of years ago but even before that
really so the vast majority of articles are negative so they had already created this at atmospherily so i think that
that context probably played a role of some description i would have thought um but then came the trojan horse letter of
course and when so that actually caused the explosion because when that landed on michael
gove's desk on the 14th of january i think he took the mata very very
seriously he raised the matter with the department for sorry with the home office as well
that perhaps this should be uh and investigated under you know extremism and radicalization and uh
terrorism legislation which is totally different than the dfe one in the end whatever whether
theresa may refused or whatever the case was i'm not familiar 100 with that but she didn't do it anyway we know that
and then michael gove then was told that the as the podcast reveals we were
talking about the podcast area so the podcast also reveals that michael gove had been told very
clearly on the meeting of the uh 12th of february uh a documentation was given to him and
he was quite clearly told that the birmingham city council after consulting the police and the counterterrorism unit
they had concluded that you know the letter was bogus and they didn't afford it much credibility yeah so that's very
clear in the podcast uh he he knew about that they had been fully briefed in
spite of that of course he continued with what he initially had intended you know from even before that he carried on
the plan rather than revisiting the plan and saying look you know we need to sort of look at uh what's going on here or
make some inquiries send some people in have a look it's not a problem you know the school is very open to those things
you can send some people investigated they can have a look and then report back and the matter wouldn't be resolved whether it is something or not something
but no that's not what he wanted to do yeah he wanted to do it in a full blaze of
publicity the media was leaked various information
fed information i would say to create the hysteria and to create the
frenzy uh uh you know which eventually surrounded our schools uh that was the
approach that was the method that was used and employed to actually justify in
the public arena the interventions in the school which was completely unnecessary if you
want to look at what's happening in the school of course the school is open to that you would go in your step and come through normal procedures
but no uh you know the trojan australia changed all of that and that and the rest is sort of you know history
as it were and he's well recorded you know from what happened so at the time this was happening did you did you
and some of the colleagues that were involved did you get a sense that there was a particular agenda on this front i
mean was there a certain amount of naivety within ourselves as a community i mean as a collective that we thought
well this is just a normal you know cut and thrust of normal school politics and we're just dealing with this thing here
or did you sense that something bigger was going on because i read somewhere and i'm just going to quote you there's
a book called the propaganda handbook and you know it's there's six points it says disguise the source be selective
about the truth make false connections create fear repeat endlessly and exploit existing
beliefs now that sounds to me as if the plot or the agenda that was against this school
from the very beginning you know satisfied everything out of that handbook so did we have as a community
do we have an appreciation of there was something bigger going on and that we need to fight it in a different way or
did we you know were we kind of almost sleepwalking into things and would we do things differently next time something
like this happens from my point of view as an educationalist really i wouldn't have done anything different regardless
because i've been doing that quite openly and transparently and i've been doing that for since 2001 uh you know
since 2000 so there's nothing new about that that was old stuff really there was
nothing new that we were doing what had changed was not what we were doing what had changed was the climate in the
country the islamophobic uh you know drum beating and the impact of that that had changed
the government had changed there was a policy shift as well you know a sort of um
uh counter-entry-ism uh due diligence units were set up in the department for education
um and even before that to be honest you're saying if there's any for warnings and so on um i'm just sort
of stretching my mind a little further back really which is that um
the the with the free schools movement there were interventions by the department of
education where in uh there was spate of um cancellation if you like and uh
and closures of free schools that were led by muslims now that's the important criteria they
were led by muslims for example the langton of lighting school in
huddersfield their application was almost approved and then there was some one letter went
in to say oh they're forcing uh some parents to sign and saying that you know you're not a good muslim if you
don't support the the founding or the establishment of the free school in
huddersfield and that was basically it so the department for education there was one
one or two articles run on that i'm sure you can find the articles in the press if you look hard enough you will find that that school then
basically there under michael goes the leadership we're talking about now they withdrew their application another
school in nottingham exactly the same led by muslims at the very end they even invested their own money in there as
well and then the department pulled the plug on the whole thing without giving a reason no reason given just pull plug
pull the plug and go home and sit and have coffee in a sanctuary building which is the department of education
offices they didn't want to engage they just went off which is very unusual they wouldn't give a reason
we know what the reason was i i think i mean i would guess what the reason was the school was muslim-led
so there were these kind of things happening and there was another school in bradford
and the very public offensive if you like which pre
uh predated parkview you will remember is the medina's school in derby a primary school and a
secondary school the way they were treated very similar to part nu exactly the same
blueprint for the operation exactly same blueprint what was the
complaint that triggered the whole thing look this is uh the complaint against part view was the
initial one that was raised on the 23rd of february 2014 was that non-muslims are being
discriminated against that was the allegation okay non-muslims are being
discriminated against um by these muslims that was the allegation in the telegraph
article okay by richard karbaj and sean griffiths that was the first article that was
published and uh so so medina school was exactly the same
pattern what was the complaint oh they're forcing uh
the non-muslim teachers to wear the hijab in the school and of course the media camped outside
they started beating the drums and they took the school down after inspectors came in
uh and they failed the school although the school had very good report from before
the academic performance was fine and what was this triggered by this is very interesting
um it was triggered by the principal actually their principal
was a gentleman who was a a christian background they got home with well got it got on
with him quite well and then they had some disagreement with him and he fell out with them and he did a
whistleblowing letter to the department for education and surprise surprise the rest you can read
the newspaper headlines and you know what they did to them yeah so it was is it so the what happened to
parkview school is is very similar to what happened to medina school as well and i know the
inside story of that school reasonably well not very well because i went to see them
and i visited them so i'm familiar with that so this so you you're saying well did didn't we
uh what were the reasons why what did it happen were we naive you know for doing what we were doing no we i we would
always been doing what we have been doing it was perfectly fine it was loaded by the local education authority what we were
doing it was in line with sacrae's requirements for you know provision of religious
aspects and so on we were 100 compliant there was no question about that whatsoever i was a member of sakurai
myself and i've been there for many years i mean you know it's very clear to me as as a as an educationalist that many of
my students they fear showing so overtly very islam uh in
at school and and you know um things that that probably you know ten years
back muslim students were quite open to uh to to call for to ask for provisions
like prayer in schools and and time out for juma these things are now heavily politicized and and you know sometimes
even in some schools um they they become um immersed with the whole prevent
agenda and so if you're if you're praying too much at school uh that may be a sign of radicalization and
you know i think a lot of this came out of um you know the trojan horse affair and and you know michael gove's uh
engagement with that yeah i think he played that quite a substantial role uh because the stars don't forget the um
the structuralization of prevent i'm not an expert on prevent or anything but i know
uh their impact on muslim children and you'll quite rightfully say
that what this has done is that it has uh it has forced muslim children to be
reticent with respect to expressing the islamic views and perspectives within classrooms and there is plenty of
evidence for that for example in london in a london school somebody researched on this
and they asked parents and they asked the children why they didn't want to make a comment on some uh you know
political event in london and uh which was quite a big event i think it's some kind of a explosion or
terrorist attack or something like that and the muslim children wouldn't say anything at all so the teacher was a bit alarmed by the
whole thing he was in the media and so on and there was right writing about that as well so she basically was quite disturbed she
was quite um alarmed you know this is very odd behavior so anyway she asked the
children later and they saw that so many of the children said that we don't want to say that in case we get accused of
something and some of them said that our parents told us not to speak about islam in school because you just picked up for
something you know and this is the whole the the point the point is that this is not an accident or
something this is the intended purpose of uh of the prevent program
it is actually a way into muslim families yeah it isn't the fact that your
five-year-old is going to uh do something you know radical or something dangerous or extreme or whatever no
but it is a way of monitoring the beliefs and the values of people and
the problem with all of this of course is that you know uh things have moved from say you know a
space which is uh which is kind of a crime arena or crime space if you like
we moved into civil liberties is what's happened so we're in the civil liberties domain now and uh some things
which are very normal for example i mean i give you an example of one child parents was parent was waking
their child up to pray fajr you know at five o'clock in the morning so obviously that became a concern so
when they found out when the child mentioned that you know i pray in the morning and i get a five o'clock was
proud of that to be honest he was kind of gloating or showing off he said you know i i pray five o'clock
and when the teachers found out uh you know they they basically called their parents in and they interrogated
the child they said oh what time you get out you do this every day whatever this and they basically were trying to
interrogate the parent as to why the child was being made to wake up at five o'clock in the morning
now quite frankly it's none of your business it's not their business you know the
child is getting up and for budgeting the five o'clock in the morning but you can see that
prevent is uh is is uh is um you know uh sort of encouraging
promoting teachers to view the muslim child with suspicion to view muslim
parents with suspicion and so on similarly we're giving there are many other examples as well
one child in the birmingham school they went into a forest trip of some description so the boy said you know sir
i want to pray you know it's during the daytime and i want to pray here and the next thing you know is the
teacher thought that was very odd why does the child want to pray here he was a 10 year old or something a primary
school age anyway i think he was 10 year old and the school the teacher came back and he reported him to the safeguarding
lead uh who had responsibility for this and the matter was referred to prevent
that this is very unu in other words this is extremist behavior so when you
when you sort of uh you know introduce these kind of measures these are completely unjust they are not justified
and we are not being treated as equal citizens to marginalize a community to target a community to view it as
as if they were all a suspect community viewed through the prism of uh you know extremism and
radicalization and essentially problematizing islam prevent has problematized islam rather
than seeing as a great civilization religion from which people can learn even if they are not believers in it
they can appreciate wisdom you know and people do that and they can sort of partake in those
things and appreciate that there's goodness they can disagree with some of us parts of it of course they can but
instead of that what we have is you know this kind of a problematizing of islam and therefore
stigmatizing muslim children and future generations and this is the tragedy
of of the whole thing and do you feel let down by the muslim community and muslim organizations um i mean i i i
know that after the trojan horse affair there wasn't a uh a fight back from the
muslim community or at least i didn't see i see one in in sort of the broader muslim community maybe
in in some circles in around you in in birmingham i know there were a few meetings that were held and and even
some non-muslims came to support you like peter obama but i didn't get the impression from many muslim
organizations that this was a a battle worth fighting yeah
i think many people uh who are closely associated to me worked in these schools are impacted by the uh
by the whole episode um you know they did feel uh i'm not speaking on just my behalf but they did
fear and i i agree with them that muslim communities response was very subdued
um partly because of the sensationalist headlines about extremism
about terrorism about misogyny and all kinds of allegations were being
made they were baseless and there's no foundation to any of them as we know now obviously none no extremism was found no
radicalization activities are found no red curriculum sporting that or atmosphere or ethos sporting that at all
nothing was found but nonetheless people became frightened they became fearful
and they didn't want association with people like myself uh because they thought that it would
compromise them in their own professional positions and if they're working in the education
sector for example that they maybe they may suffer a detriment um you know and they may get bullied or
forced out of their job or something maybe associated with the trojan horse plot as it were uh so these were concerns that people
had they were frightened uh and that and that wasn't an accident or anything that was very very
deliberate the fear you go to those six stages here this is the fear but the fear is very
important if you want to justify uh
measures if you want to justify interventions and you know disproportionate
measures then you have to have fear in order for those measures to go through because under normal circumstances
people the public broadly you know who have good sense of justice and so on they will not like that they will say oh
this is not right this is not fair they will object to those things but if you
whip up hysteria and fear then they would buy into that so i think that as i spoke about earlier that there
was kind of a social acceptance was being created that look these guys are up to no good okay
although there's no evidence base for any of it but nonetheless uh that was the uh atmosphere which which did create
a fear in the muslim community and it had a very very chilling effect where
you know muslim children certainly are self-self-censoring themselves parents are saying to them to self-censor as
well because they don't want come back on those things and prevent our creating lists
so if you look at the list for children you know five six-year-old if he says anything that's
whatever they go on the list they're not telling you that but i'm telling you that they're going on the list
uh because there's somebody sitting there you know the problem with this entire approach actually is that you
know when you employ people in these kind of roles to justify their role
they will always exaggerate yeah and try to basically hang people to
find people you know they say if you're looking for trouble you'll find it around the corner yeah so these guys are looking for
radicals and extremists and uh you know something to report to justify their job so the dumb can continue for another 10
years so you will get you know people who are trigger happy to actually do that and there's a lot of
evidence for that as well we've talked about a lot about you know where prevent has brought us and where the trojan
horse letter and the plot has brought to uh brought the muslim community to now
um i guess my question is is where do we go from here you know what do we do do
we how do we approach this issue now as a community both from a a failing school point of view in terms
of what you've described earlier in terms of how we uplift you know that attainment level within the schools
within our community but also from an aspect of saving our values and kind of
upkeeping our values you know where does the muslim community go from here what's your world would your advice be to
people who want to get involved in schools in governorships or just generally uh you know kind of frame
the kind of islamic ethos behind our younger generation how would you kind of approach it i think i'll make a few
points actually which are important and the top of those points is that
it is very important that muslims influence and shape the education of
their own children i couldn't emphasize that more okay and
parents can do many things within the home and parents can have the option to send
their children to independent schools if they can afford to and if the children go to schools which
are state schools it's very important that they speak to their children that they interact with the school as
well because you because not everybody what we shouldn't do is to disengage because this is what the people who
pushed us out that's what they wanted okay so if the muslim community disengages from schools and institutions
of this country then we are doing a terrible disservice to the people of this country to our neighbors and to
this society as muslims we should bring faith goodness
to whatever environment we are in this is the important thing okay
this is the mission you know of islam the purpose of islam yeah that we bring mercy kindness
and raham to the environment to the people to the neighbors and to the mankind
so if we we cannot uh be our enemies if you like uh protagonists would want us
to become um you know discouraged to become disheartened and to take a back seat and to become
recluses no we have to stand up for these things and actively ensure that our children are
educated you know to succeed in the dunya and also in the akhirah
dunya so they are successful in those things
and the way we can ensure that is through participating in these things we should continue to encourage people to
become involved in education in establishing new schools in becoming teachers it's very important the muslim
representation is very poor um you know in relation to our actual
population and people in leadership positions and so on it's very important that we continue to do that
and one of the most damaging aspects of this whole
saga and episode has been actually that
the muslim leadership of school was schools was attacked and what has happened is that and other
legislation has been changed as well actually which has reduced parental participation as kind of i mean the
stakeholder model has been completely removed stakeholder model means that where people whose children come to the
school for example one-third of their parents on the governing bodies used to be like parents but now that system is
completely gone what that means is this the accountability
the capacity of the communities to hold the schools to account to challenge the schools to to to be
accountable as well in terms of the academic performance in terms of the uh
other provision uh within the school as well that has been diminished quite substantially if
you are a muslim parent or a muslim governor and you make noise
you risk actually being part of the trojan horse plot and exhibiting behaviors
which are indicative of the trojan horse plot that is that you are challenging uh the
school and that you are making demands of the school and you are persistent in that
and the chances are that the different local authority is mandated to have people sitting there
to whom the referrals can be made that such the governor a mr rayas is a
troublemaker and he's pushing an islamic agenda because he wants prayer room
or that he is actually giving the head teacher a very hard time because the school is failing all the
children its results are 30 and he's not happy what we did actually
in the perfume scenario in the pakistan was that there was an accepted belief
amongst local authorities amongst generally teachers amongst generally
with some exceptions perhaps amongst ofsted inspectors as well that children from these kind of backgrounds 70
children on free school meals high socioeconomic deprivation factors ethnic minorities english as a second
language all those host of uh you know bundle of reasons
that should actually result in very heavy level of underachievement all those factors were there
but what we proved was that this established narrative
wisdom established nationally across number of uh
organizations and responsible bodies like i've said like
local authorities and also teaching fraternities as well that this
conclusion was false we completely broke the back of this conclusion
nobody could say that actually that these factors were not surmountable and
they were cementable in a sustained manner not a blip it's not like one year you know you get a good cohort you know
like a very bright year and the results can go up and the following year you'll be down again i remember the first day
our results went into the 70s some some people were saying oh no it's probably a blip you know they had a very
good year very good cohort and you get that whatever well they stayed in the 70s from then onwards they never came
down so it was sustained so if your child entered this school they're going to get this result
you know it was set it was set in stone that's what's going to happen and if your child didn't make it you
know the school became so popular our intake in the school
was 300 meters if you lived more than 300 meters you will not get a place in the school
because nobody from the area was sending child children to anywhere else outside
and people were trying to get in from other schools into the school they can't get in we were the second most over
subscribed school after the grammar schools yeah grammar school was top we were
second most over subscribed school in the city of birmingham everybody wanted to send the children to
our school because they knew we were guaranteeing outcomes if the child entered here
then the trajectory was clear the pathway was clear and uh where is it now it i think the
results uh for the last few years have been in their 40s i think this year they just passed the 50.
department of education might say mr taya alam is a bad guy and be bad him and so on
the people who destroyed these people who intervened here in this in these schools they destroyed the education of
our children okay quite frankly it is criminal and i can tell you when we left when i
uh resigned the school the results were 72 the school results went down to
in the 40s in the 40s yeah two years later in
2016 i think 2016 inspection guess what the school from being
category 4 inadequate lowest grading 4 he was scored as being good so for 75
down to 40 something and the offset grading is going the other way i mean the fallacy of the whole thing
and the fascicle interventions and and now sorry one more thing the other school we ran across the road
school to which i went as a pupil nansen school i went to dancing school which is the school we ran i also as a pupil went
to parkview school okay these are both schools that i went to and that's where i went back to make a difference if you
like nansen school is now uh as a when we were there the results
were 71 percent yeah some criteria has changed but nansen result is now
30 something percent and the school has now been put into special measures it's a failing school
now so this is the real impact we're talking about what's the impact of trojan wars
well one is the removal of accountability if your school is failing is going to continue to fail for decades
to come because there's no mechanism for people to intervene and to to interject the process of consistent
and sustained failure over decades which is what had happened before what was happening before and is happening now
and it's not being challenged and i am sure it is the same in um in luton as well
and people have got their little 50 bent mark it's okay for 50 people to fail so this is the lasting impact
of uh of the entire trojan horse affair accountabilities have been removed
and the schools have been failed and they'll be failing i mean how many years is it now is seven eight years ago
and what's happened to the schools and that's very revealing i think uh brother tyra i mean do you feel that
uh organizations like ofsted have been compromised politically compromised uh
by the conservatives in particular who've used it as a way to pursue their their
very overt uh islamophobic agenda i mean they're weaponized in relation to our
schools they're weaponized of states our study is supposed to be independent of the department for education
okay there's a reason for that and the reasons are good it's a good setup it's a good plan
and uh and a good principle to follow but uh ofsted was weaponized they were go they
were they were essentially um you know arm twisted into taking these schools down when there's no
justification for taking the schools down so i that has established that pattern now you see it's the same
uh interference which uh
when the upstate inspectors came in 2016 is the same interference which allowed the school to be graded from inadequate
to good when the results were going the other way around are you with me so the entire set of criteria had
actually altered so school is no longer graded on performance academic
performance education opportunities and the platforms that are given to children on
the back of academic performance but it's based on something else maybe if they are promoting i don't know
whatever their british values might be okay so this school is now good rated because maybe they're good at promoting
whatever british values might be or whatever the case is but it certainly is not academic performance
and that is being used as the main criteria for grading schools anymore so even that
has been even that has changed following the following the trojan horse affair so
the trojan rose affair has affected many many things including ofsted i know you're you're pressed for time
but i i do really want to ask you a question about uh the future of
muslims uh in this country actually i mean many muslims now see
their position in this country as as as very precarious i mean i i spent
the last six months in in istanbul and i met plenty of muslims from the west
young muslims who've got young families and the number one reason behind why
they've moved to istanbul and it could have been any muslim country to be honest was that
they feared the future of their kids in in muslim in in education in in in this
country and and i would imagine um events like the trojan horse affair played a part in
them forming a view about whether they could successfully navigate
uh the uh the education system and and um survive you know uh in if they decided to
uh to take a proactive role in in the education of their children i mean what's your thinking is the game up for
for us as a muslim community are we are we moving down a french uh pathway where
uh the muslims are disempowered and and the state has the the biggest impact on the future of our kids i mean certainly
i mean i i would uh you know agree with the concerns that parents have
uh we clearly in the last you know decade decade and a half have not moved
in the right direction be in the wrong direction in terms of civil liberties of not just muslims actually but more wider
as well we've become a much more authoritarian uh society
less the less democratic as well in terms of operations and things an example of that
within the education is the disbandment of the stakeholder model which obviously
david cameron spoke about big society i mean that's just a slogan really what they created was a tiny society or a you
know smaller society not a big society so these are just slogans that people talk about so we have we are moved in
the wrong direction and the entire europe has moved in the wrong direction actually and uh this is
born out of in my view this born out of insecurity because i think there's genuine confusion
uh within sort of a western nation generally there's a loss of confidence if you like as well a loss of direction loss of
confidence loss of ideological um form as well if you like you know
standing for certain things and people are not clear about those things anymore you know and things have become vague
um and and and and that has created an insecurity and therefore whenever you're
feeling insecure you will then want to blame somebody you will find somebody uh you know who you
think is the culprit you know and other people and as part of that of course the
discrimination against muslims and and other communities as well i mean look at the windrush generation okay
we can sort of think of ourselves as victims and so on and there's a lot of truth in that quite obviously but uh
look at the wind regeneration somebody's lived here for 50 years there may rules have been made for them
that they can be just uh you know told absolutely you're going home now that's the end of that well i lived there 50
years i paid taxes for 50 years no no you haven't got the right paper go home i mean it's just ridiculous and inhumane
but people don't have a problem with enacting these kind of terrible laws which which completely disregard
the fact that somebody's you know lived there for so long they've been part of this country and they lived here and
suddenly their rights and their passports can be completely uh you know thrown in the dustbin
as if they didn't live here so this is a a really uh it's a sad trajectory for
this country uh you know and um and and i don't want to paint gloomy
pictures here or anything but i think that you know people who stand for justice people who stand for freedom who
want to make good societies should work for creating good society good sizes are not made by accident
people participate people stand up people take action and that's how good society that's how
goodness prevails so we must always promote goodness you know for all people
uh and that's what we must always work for this is part of the islamic duty and its duty of every human being as well i
believe you know the prophet peace be upon him he said that if you see a wickedness an evil or
wrong doing injustice all of those things he said stop it with your hand so if you have the authority and you
have the power then you stop it with the hand you don't speak against it you stop it
using your authority your power and so on and your influence you do that
so we are always trying to do that trying to make society better and a more just society a more peaceful
society and he said if he cannot do that if that is beyond your you don't have any power and authority then you try to
change it with your uh by with with your tongue by speech and speech can obviously be written
includes written it includes what you're doing screen media it includes um you
know just speaking generally to people as well whether in written form print format or video format whatever it might
be or radio format you're doing yeah with me so so you use these avenues to
always uphold the truth uphold the justice and and always you know uh contribute
towards the betterment of people and society and bring hate to the world this is what it's about so whatever the
situation is wherever you go in the world you know there are different challenges you go to saudi arabia there'll be different challenges than
here okay maybe not the same ones but then the other ones you go to turkey there'll be this type of challenge but
not that like type of challenge you go to pakistan you're the same like
we created the human being definitely in a state of struggle and strife so these kind of challenges and ups and
downs these are part of life okay and we are judged according to you know
our involvement and our participation our response um you know in uh to these situations
and the challenges that we face so um uh so as uh iqbal
you know very famously in his uh in his uh you know he says
do not be afraid do not be fearful or frightened by the ferocity of the wind that bro blows against you don't be
frightened by that yet yeah its purpose is to raise your
altitude yeah because the eagle uses the goes into the window and it's raises it wants to raise his altitude you know as
a aerodynamic phenomena here so he goes into the wind he says do not be frightened by that it just means that we
have to raise our game yeah this is what iqbal is saying that if you if you if you receive opposition then
you have to have uh strength courage determination and it is you see it as an opportunity
to raise your game rather than you know cower and uh and and uh run away and those kind of things
and those people who want to i suppose uh i've gone to other countries done hijra if you like
i deeply respect them i think that their concerns are very valid um and one of the most important of the
we should one of the fundamental human rights actually is that we should be able to raise your
children upon parents should be able to raise their children upon their own philosophical and
religious convictions it's part of the human rights act as well more nationally and european-wide as well
that it's not for state or other people to basically start indoctrinating and brainwashing other people's children
ideologically religiously into something else which the parents are not you know happy with so these things are
being impinged upon as well uh certainly in france i mean the situation is very bad
it's basically uh you know hitting uh you know almost a nazi kind of level of
oppression and persecution i mean it's a persecutory state quite frankly and the human rights mean nothing in
france anymore um and so these things we have to oppose and stand up really and these are
you know the trials of life but we have to raise our game is what i would say
for your contribution today to our podcast and uh may allah use this
the challenges that come out of this situation to to improve our community
and to embolden i think many muslims who seek to have a better life for
themselves and their families