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The
Poisonous Campaign against the British Muslims
Dr Firoz Mahboob Kamal
The Trojan horse hoax
For more than a week, the British government and the whole British media, with
a very few exceptions is on a propaganda hype to depict the Muslims with terrorist
taint. It was alleged that the Muslim extremists have taken control of
five schools in the second biggest city of Birmingham to groom terrorists. The
issue created huge uproar as if the UK’s security is under a great threat. Mr
Michael Gove -the British education secretary appointed Mr Peter Clarke -
London Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorism chief to investigate the plot. Such
an appointment of a high ranking anti-terrorism expert in an academic premise
speaks a lot about the government's hidden agenda. It implies that the
government has already made a judgement before the enquiry. As if, an event of
7/7 magnitude has happened in those schools.
In those schools, the Ofsted inspection team of
Department for Education (DfE) found inadequacies in sex education, science
education and sex segregation and gave suggestions to comply with. But Mr
Peter Clarke –the counter terrorism expert was sent there to discover something
else to feed government’s neocon agenda -revealed in subsequent speeches of the
British Prime Minister Mr David Cameron and Education Secretary Mr Michael
Gove. It is worth mentioning that Ofsted found the same inadequacies in sex and
science education in Catholic and ultra-orthodox Jewish schools almost every
year, but the government never discover any Trojan horse plot there. Just
to put more venom into anti-Islamic propaganda, the most British press
published news that in those schools white women are described as prostitute.
The Time, the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard published such news with a
big headline. The non-Muslim school management authority and even the white
teachers of those schools called it a blatant lie. But the media continued to
spread the lie and did the decisive damage.
The Panic in the Muslim
community
Appointment of a counter terrorism expert was sufficient
to cause tremendous trauma to the students’ psyche and huge panic in the Muslim
community. These innocent young children were given the harsh message that they
are under close scrutiny as potential terrorists. The students were taken to
interrogation rooms to face the spy agents. Such interrogations are usually
used by the security apparatus to derive information from suspected or
combatant terrorists. It is now revealed that the investigation team has also
used coercion to derive information to feed their agenda. However, the
investigation team couldn’t discover any grooming exercise or tool of
indoctrination that could help make the students terrorist. However, they could
discover that more than 98 percent of the students of these schools are Muslim,
and the remaining 2 percent are the Romanian immigrants. The investigation team
might have been upset by the conspicuous absence of the English students in
their midst. They might have been also upset by seeing almost all of the Muslim
girls in hijab, almost all of the Muslim students offering midday prayer in the
school premises and some teachers with long beard. Probably such unusual
features on the British soil didn’t match very well with the usual picture of
an English school. They considered such unusual features of the Muslim schools
as markers of extremism; hence returned back to the schools within weeks with
plans and strategies for snatching these outstanding schools from the local
governors and managers.
The Trojan horse hoax and the concurrent poisonous campaign against the British
Muslims have put some new light on the anti-Muslims agenda of the British
neocons. It shows how heavily they have infested the current conservative
government. It also reveals the anti-Muslim agenda of the British media. The
Daily Mail, the Time, the Evening Standard are in the forefront of spreading
such venom against the Muslims. Such offensive campaign has also exposed the
government's discriminatory standard for the Muslim citizens of the country.
State funded faith schools are not new in the UK. The Catholic, the Protestant,
the Jew, the Sikh and the followers of other religions have their own faith
schools; distinctive dress, symbols and curriculum to enhance religiosity in
the children are not uncommon there. But such Trojan horse hue and cry was
never raised against those faith schools. The British government thus shows its
deep discrimination against the Muslim majority schools.
Denial of educational right
Like survival right, the educational right is very
fundamental. Without proper education, it becomes impossible for a man to be
fully human with much needed moral, intellectual and spiritual attributes. In
civilised societies, every human has the right to make a free choice of his or
her religion. But such right remains unachievable if he or she is denied the
full right to be a perfect follower of such faith. None should be compelled to
make any compromise on such core issue of pursuing full religiosity. Hence, a
Muslim must have a right to be a full Muslims: hence his or her Islamisation
needs to be complete, or at least optimal. For that, a Muslim child needs
optimum Islmisation of his knowledge, thought, behaviour and culture. For
Muslims, such Islamisation is a religious obligation: any amount of comprise on
such issues only endangers the students’ upbringing as a full Muslim and
increases the chances of getting deviated from Islamic road map –delineated by
the Holy Qur’an. So it is a crucial issue of every Muslim who aims at grooming
their children as true Muslims. But those who nurture deep anti-Islamic and
anti-Muslim agenda deny such rights to the Muslims. In fact, the British
education policy is taking that route. It is indeed the legacy of its colonial
past.
Dismantling the process of
Islamisation
For optimal Islamisation, it is indispensable that every
child must be provided with adequate access to original sources of Islamic
knowledge like the holy Qur’an, the tradition of the prophet, practices of the
early days’ Muslims and the Islamic history. Hence the duties of the Muslim
families, societies and states are not only to provide food, shelter and health
care to their children, but also ensuring such basic Islamic opportunities. It
is the minimum religious requirement of a Muslim child. Otherwise they miss to
be a true practitioner of Islam. Such basics of Islamisation can’t be labelled
as indoctrination to extremism –as has been alleged by the neocons and the
secularist extremists. It amounts to label the last prophet of Islam and his
devout followers as extremists and terrorists. Such Islamisation through
education is so important in Islam that it was made an obligation prior to
other religious obligations like five times daily prayers, month-long fasting
in Ramadan, haj and zakat. Muslims can't generate, nor can sustain true faith
without enabling education and educational institutions. Creating such
institutions is not only the duty of the Muslim parents and the Muslim
communities, but also the duty of the state where they live in and pay the
taxes. But the enemies of Islam do the opposite: dismantling Islamic
institutions and obstructing the establishment of such institutions becomes the
key strategy -as was the policy of the European colonialists, communists and
autocratic fascists in the occupied Muslim lands.
Therefore, occupation of the Muslim land,
demilitarisation of its people and dismantling the native industries were not
the only strategies of the colonial powers. Destroying the institutions of
Islmisation received the highest priority in their anti-Muslim campaign. It
helped them to take the Muslims away from the Islamic road map –the siratul
mustaqeem. The colonial missionary project of Christianisation though got a
great success in Americas, in some part of Africa and in a small part of Asia
(Philippines), but failed in all Muslim lands. Such failure in Christianisation
prompted them to take another route. And it was de-Islmisation through
education. Education worked as a powerful tool of indoctrination against Islam.
The European colonialists indeed attained huge success in this new strategy. It
caused huge damage to the Muslims and Islam. In fact, there exists little
difference between the conversion to Christianity and de-Islamisation. The
catastrophic consequence is almost the same: both take the people far away from
the Quranic road map and inject the vitriolic animosity against Muslims and
Islam. The people who dismantled Hafsa madrasa in Islamabad and killed scores
of its girl students, and those killed or maimed thousands of innocent
religious people in Shapla round-about in Dhaka and those who massacred
thousands of Muslim protestors in Cairo’s streets are not the Christian
crusaders or the Hindu thugs of BJP-Shiv Sena-RSS outfits, they are the army of
the de-Islamised converts.
The
British colonial power has collapsed, but their anti-Muslims campaign has not
ended. It still survives amongst the neocons. They are fighting the same battle
with the same strategy -not only in occupied Muslim lands but in their own land
with significant Muslim population. In fact, the Trojan horse hoax against 5
Birmingham schools is only the tip of such anti-Muslim campaign. They are not
ready to see the Muslims grooming up with any amount of Islamisation. They
label such provision as indoctrination to terrorism. But what happened in
Birmingham schools is far from Islamisation. These schools didn’t provide any
enhanced access to Islamic knowledge or Islamic grooming. These schools are not
Muslim faith schools and not managed by the Muslims. These are secular state
schools -focused only to follow the state curriculum; and were regularly
monitored by the state inspection teams. Therefore how the so-called Trojan
horses can land in Birmingham in the midst of so many vigilant eyes of the
government? Is it not the new bogey of the neocons to frighten the local people
against the Muslims? The Ofsted school inspection team couldn't find any
evidence that these schools were ignoring any part of state curriculum and
teaching Islam. Instead, two of the alleged five schools made outstanding
performance to meet the curriculum-based learning targets. Apart from head scarf
and hijab, segregation of girls and boys during the physical exercise classes,
few books on Islam in the library, congregation prayers at lunch break, absence
of Christmas tree amidst 98% Muslim students and few teachers with long beards
-what else could they find to suggest a deceitful takeover of British land –as
the Trojan horse plot implies?
The Islamophobia
Fear of Islam has reached its peak in the UK. It
has heavily influenced the policy makers of the current conservative
government. In such panic, the common sense can seldom survive. And with such
panic, increasing Islamisation of the Muslim youth has been announced a great
threat to British society, its culture and values. The slogan of
multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural British survives only as
eyewash. The ground reality is different. Hence the Muslims with Islamic faith
and culture are considered as a big threat. Now Mr Gove and Mr Cameron believe
that “robust educational intervention” can stop such Islamic resurgence.
Education institutions have been successfully used by
the British colonialist to do de-Islamisation of the Muslims in the occupied
lands. Now they want to do the same in the UK. In the name of British values
and culture, they want to restrict any educational and cultural inputs in
schools that may help Islamisation of the Muslim children. To slash the
influence of the Muslim parents, the government has already dissolved the
school governors’ body and has taken over the control of 5 schools allegedly linked
to so-called Trojan horse plot. The government has labelled any access to
knowledge on Islam as indoctrination of terrorism. So they are keeping close
vigilance on books in the school libraries. In fact, such government policy
exposes its extreme contempt of simple religiosity of the Muslims children.
Even benign practice of Islam has been given the colour of terrorism -as
if these young kids are being groomed as terrorist.
Both Mr Cameron and Mr Gove have told that they will not
make any difference between such extreme religiosity and the violent extremism.
They believe in so-called "conveyor belt" concept that confirms
non-violent Islamism and terrorism as the parts of the same process. Hence,
they don’t make any difference between peaceful practice of Islam of the
majority and the armed violence of a few. It is indeed the pathological
ignorance on Muslim culture and Islam. When the Prime Minister of a country
like UK suffers from such disease can only cause disasters. Indeed, due to such
cultural ignorance, the occupying US and British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq
failed to recognise the differences between the simple religiosity and the
violent extremism. Hence they repeatedly bombed the wedding and funeral
gatherings. Now it appears that Mr Cameron and his neocon comrades suffer from
same ignorance. If such ignorance and intolerance goes on increasing, it is not
unlikely that the British Army and the police may surround the Muslim majority
schools in the UK with tanks and heavy guns, and the apache helicopter may drop
bombs on the children. And the Muslims may be put in oven too –as
happened with the millions of Jews in Nazi Germany. Those who did such
horrendous crime were not less educated or less modern than Mr Cameron and his
comrades.
The fabrication and the crime
The alleged five schools are located in Birmingham’s
deprived Muslim areas. More than 90% of the students are Muslim. Like other
schools in the UK, these schools too had a body of governors taken from the
local population. Considering the specific demography of the area, it is not
unusual that most of the governors were also Muslim. However these governors
didn’t have any power or authority to change the school curriculum, nor could
they dictate the teachers what to teach and what not to teach. They could only
convey the community’s concern vis-à-vis school performance and the expectation
of the parent; hence could help connect the school management and teachers to
the community.
Such healthy interaction with the community improved the
performance of these schools much better than the average British schools. Two
of these five schools were labelled outstanding by the previous inspection
team. Even the non-Muslim teachers are very happy with such healthy environment
of the school. In an article published in the Guardian on 10.06.14, the
non-Muslim vice-head of one of the schools strongly appreciated the Muslim
governors’ role in the improvement of the school’s learning environment and
denied any indoctrination of terrorism. But Mr Gove –the education secretary
and other neo-cons in the British government and the British media did not like
such role. Such good performance didn’t impress them. It seems they wanted
something else which didn’t come out of these schools. Hence the follow-up
report after a short while found theses schools inadequate and put them under
special arrangement. Their paranoia made them so crazy that they perceived
such positive contribution of the Muslims as a conspiracy to take over the education
system. They went to the extent to label it as a “Trojan horse plot”. What can
be more defamatory and humiliating for the British Muslims?
The Trojan horse plot carries a huge negative
connotation of invading a country with a deceitful ploy. In an epic story it
says how the Greek invaded the city of Troy under the camouflage of a wooden
horse. It says a lot about the neo-con’s cynical mentality against the Muslims.
They can only celebrate the invasion and occupation of the Muslim lands and the
massacres of the innocents -as they did during their colonial rule and recently
in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are not ready to recognise even the Muslims’
excellent contribution to the British society. The same mentality brought the
total annihilation of Muslims and Jews in Spain in fifteenth century –though
they contributed heavily to educate the Europeans over a span of seven hundred
years. Indeed, the British government and the British media –with a very few
exceptions, have done everything possible to paint the Muslims with a bad
colour –without any consideration of the adverse impact of such malice on the
Muslim psyche.
The paranoia
Mr Michael Gove –the British Education secretory is
known for such negative and offensive attitude against the Muslims for long
time. Trojan horse is not a new vocabulary in his anti-Muslim narratives. On
7th June 2014, the Guardian published a revealing story on Mr Gove's neocon
ideology against Islam and the Muslim. In his polemic book "Celsius 7/7"
published in 2006, he wrote a chapter with the title "the Trojan
Horse". Mr Gove justified writing such a book with the perception that
there exists "a widespread reluctance to acknowledge the real scale and
nature of the Islamist terror" in Britain and "the failure to
scrutinise, monitor or check the actions, funding and operations of those
committed to spreading the Islamists word in Britain".( The Guardian;
7.06.14).
With such a distorted perception, Mr Gove finds the
Muslims’ presence anywhere in the UK as a Trojan horse ploy. He thinks that the
Muslims are here only to occupy the UK. Hence it is not surprising that his
ministry could use the overwhelming presence of the Muslims in five schools in
Birmingham as a convenient pretext for a Trojan horse hoax. Mr Gove is
one of those extremist neocons in British politics and media who see the
presence of the Muslims as the threat not only to the British values and
culture but also to the west as a whole. He is very critical of the past Labour
government’s policies for not doing anything against the Muslims. He begins the
chapter of the book with the following sentence: "Nowhere has moral
clarity been more lacking in British state policy over the last ten to fifteen
years than in approach to the Islamist threat." He also writes that
a sizeable minority of 1.8 million (now 3 million) Muslims hold rejectionist
views; and he went to the length to compare Muslims as Nazi and communist
threat. He added, "The west faces a challenge to its values, culture and
freedom as profound in its way as the threat posed by fascism and communism.
But the response to that challenge from many in the west is all too often
confused, temporising, weak and compromised." The Time published huge
banner-headed news on 9th June with the caption "Mr Gove told to launce
'dawn raids' on schools". The news covered almost whole of the front page.
Such "dawn raids" are usually carried out to catch thieves, robbers
or killers, or to make D-Day like invasion into a country. The Times
also quoted from the Prime Minister Cameron saying, “Protecting our children is
one of the first duties of government that is why the issue of alleged Islamist
extremism in Birmingham schools demands a robust response." But what does
it mean by protecting children from Islamic extremism? How did he define
extremism? What are the markers of extremism? Do they label wearing hijab,
offering prayer, giving azan in school premises and keeping long beard,
avoiding sex education and reading Islamic books as extremism?
Tool of the dogged imperialists
Education is the strongest stool for causing cultural conversion as well
domination of the occupied people. It brings occupation on the territory of
mind. In Muslim countries that has been used by the colonial imperialists to perpetuate
their cultural empire. The colonial powers have not only been successful to do
ethnic cleansing in many occupied lands, but also a cultural cleansing to
promote their own values and culture. The British Empire has died, but its
desire to sustain its cultural empire still survives –especially in minds of
the people like Mr Cameron and Mr Gove. The education secretory Mr Michael Gove
couldn’t hide such imperialistic intention either. He recently told in the
British Parliament that the educational institutions in the UK will exert all
effort to promote British values, and will not tolerate any religious
extremism. Here, the target is Islam. Simon Jenkins –the very prominent
Guardian columnist describes Mr Gove as the most dogged imperialist (The Guardian
11th June, 2014).
Due to the emergence of large Muslim population in the
UK, sustenance of such colonial ambition of the British Imperialists faces some
home grown challenge. Many of the young Muslims are determined to grow up with
the core Islamic beliefs that were nurtured by the prophet of Islam himself and
his devout companions. To them, these early Muslims of the prophet’s time are
the true figure of highness that deserved to be followed in every aspect of the
life. Hence the original Islam enters into their hearts with its inherent
sharia, khelafa, migration and jihad. The de-Islamised and secularised converts
to the western values and culture enjoy little honour or credibility in the
eyes of these young British Muslims. This owes to the huge bulk of Islamic
books in English language which is much more enriched than many of the native
languages of Muslim countries like Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Malaysian, Indonesian,
Somalian or Turkish languages. Hence women with hijab and youth with long beard
are more visible in British universities than in the universities of
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey or Indonesia. Islam is more visible in some parts
of the UK like East London, Birmingham, Bradford, Oldham and Luton than many
parts of the Muslim countries. One can find hardly a Bangladeshi, Indian or
Pakistani youths fighting in the jihad of Syria. But hundreds of British youths
have already reached there; many of them have already given their life. This
has added more venom to the anti-Islamic narratives of the British neocons.
They are struggling to reconcile with such harsh reality of the British
society. They are raising Trojan horse hoax just to encounter that
reality. 14/06/2014/
Dr Firoz Kamal
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