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UK:
Probe of Islamic Takeover Plot Widens
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The problem of Islam in public
schools has been allowed to snowball to vast proportions... not hundreds
but thousands of British schools have come under the influence of Muslim
radicals.
Bains was also instructed to stop
teaching citizenship classes because they were deemed to be
"un-Islamic," and to introduce Islamic studies into the
curriculum, even though Saltley is a non-faith school.
Schools should not be allowed to
become "silos of segregation." — Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime
Minister
British authorities say they have widened their investigation into an
alleged plot by Muslim fundamentalists to Islamize public schools in
England and Wales.
The expanded probe now encompasses at least 25 schools in Birmingham,
up from four initially. Investigators are also looking into new
allegations that Muslim extremists have infiltrated schools in other
British cities, including Bradford and Manchester.
The plot—dubbed Operation
Trojan Horse—consists of a strategy to wrest control of schools by
ousting non-Muslim head teachers and staff at secular state schools and
replacing them with individuals who will run the schools according to
strict Islamic principles.
A copy of a strategy document outlining the plot was sent to the
Birmingham City Council in November 2013, but its existence did not
become known to the public until March 2014, when it was leaked
to the London-based newspaper, the Sunday Times.
Although police are still working to determine the authenticity of the
document, what remains beyond dispute is that Muslim hardliners are
subverting the British school system in ever greater numbers.
Since Operation Trojan Horse came to light, British authorities have
been inundated
with more than 200 whistleblower complaints in Birmingham alone—including
emails, letters and telephone calls from parents, teachers and school
leaders—about the imposition of conservative Islamic practices in
primary, secondary and community schools, as well as in publicly-funded
academies.
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The former
headmaster of Saltley School in Birmingham resigned following a plot by
Islamist fanatics to oust him. (Image source: Screenshot from BBC
video)
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Allegations include the takeover of school governing bodies by Islamic
fundamentalists, harassment and squeezing-out of non-Muslim teachers,
forcing female students to cover their hair, banning sex-education
classes, bullying female staff, and segregating boys and girls in
classrooms.
Over the past several weeks, Ofsted,
the official agency for inspecting British schools, has carried out
surprise inspections of at least 18 schools in Birmingham, under orders
from the British Department for Education. This is in addition to a
separate investigation being conducted by the Birmingham City Council.
The initial findings of these investigations are to be published in May,
with full reports following in July.
But critics say the schools inspected so far represent only the tip of
the iceberg. The problem of Islam in public schools has been allowed to
snowball to vast proportions—not dozens, nor hundreds, they
say, but thousands of British schools have come under the influence
of Muslim radicals—and they accuse the British government of willful
complacency driven by blind obeisance to multiculturalism.
One such critic is Michael White, a former teacher at Birmingham's
Park View School, which is at the center of the controversy. White
recently told
the BBC that concerns of an "Islamic takeover plot" were
first raised more than 20 years ago, but they were ignored by government
officials obsessed with enforcing political correctness.
White said he was "forced out" after he challenged attempts
by the Muslim governors of the school to ban sex education and stop the
teaching of non-Islamic faiths in religious education classes.
Another critic, Birmingham's Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, says the
majority of the governors at the school are Salafists and Wahhabis,
Muslim hardliners who are "trying to import their views into
classrooms and the day to day running of the school." In an interview
with the Birmingham Mail, Mahmood said he believes British
education officials have previously resisted getting involved in disputes
with Muslim schools for fear of being called racist or anti-Islamic.
Ofsted is now investigating allegations that Muslim hardliners at the
school are indoctrinating pupils by—among other tactics—teaching them to
praise the anti-Western sermons of firebrand Muslim preachers such as the
late Anwar al-Awlaki, who planned terrorist operations for the Islamist
group al Qaeda. They are also accused of misusing £70,000 (€85,000;
$120,000) of taxpayers' money to purchase playground loudspeakers to call
pupils to Islamic prayers.
Muslim school officials insist the allegations are unfounded and
motivated by Islamophobia. "There is no evidence for any of these
things whatsoever," one of the governors of the school, Tahir Alam,
told BBC Radio.
"I believe it is a witch-hunt based on all sorts of false
allegations which have been repeated over many weeks. I also believe it
is motivated by anti-Muslim, anti-Islam sentiment that is also sort of
feeding this frenzy," he added.
But similar allegations abound at other schools in Birmingham. The
head teacher of the Saltley School was
forced out after he opposed plans by the Muslim governors of the
school to scrap sex education and allow only halal food.
Balwant Bains, who is of Sikh origin, was also instructed to stop
teaching citizenship classes because they were deemed to be
"un-Islamic," and to introduce Islamic studies into the
curriculum, even though Saltley is a non-faith school.
Bains says he was "bullied and intimidated" in the months
before he left Saltley School in November 2013. After Muslim governors
overturned his decision to expel a Muslim pupil found with a knife, Bains
was also targeted in an anonymous text message that branded him a
"racist, Islamophobic head teacher."
Bains resigned after an Ofsted report concluded he had a
"dysfunctional" relationship with the school's governors. In
recent months, five non-Muslim governors of the Saltley School have
resigned, leaving 12 Muslim governors out of a total of 14.
This is not the first time the Saltley School has been linked to
Muslim extremists. Previously, an "achievement mentor" at the
school was arrested for his involvement in a terror cell which planned to
behead a British soldier. Zahoor Iqbal was jailed for seven years in 2008
for supplying equipment for terrorist acts and supplying money or
property for use in terrorism.
Another whistleblower told the Sunday
Times that the new Muslim head teacher at Ladypool Primary School
in Birmingham stopped Christmas celebrations after her appointment in
September 2013.
The teacher, Huda Aslam, who was recruited from an Islamic secondary
school near Ladypool, told teachers organizing last year's Christmas
party that Santa Claus was banned from the school and that there would be
no presents and "no mention" of Jesus being the son of God.
Fresh allegations have also emerged in Manchester and Bradford. At
Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College and Carlton Bolling College,
both in Bradford, there are claims that head teachers have come under
pressure from Muslim governors to introduce Islamic practices.
Meanwhile, Birmingham's ten MPs have united to demand that Education
Secretary Michael Gove launch a full inquiry into Operation Trojan Horse.
The MPs from all three main parties presented a united front in a joint
letter urging Gove to establish a cross-party review with the city
council to build a "full picture" of what has happened.
Amid mounting criticism for failing to act swiftly over the crisis,
Gove said
on April 13 that he would send teams of inspectors into dozens of state
schools and order them to fail any schools where "religious
conservatism is getting in the way of learning and a balanced
curriculum."
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has also backed the investigations.
Schools should not be allowed to become "silos of segregation,"
he said.
The investigation will be carried out in phases, with a second wave of
snap inspections of state and private schools taking place later in the
year, once Ofsted determines the scale of the problem.
Soeren Kern is a
Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo
de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on
Twitter.
Turkey
No Longer Respects Europe
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Europe's biggest failure
vis-à-vis Turkey is another example of its unwillingness to face
unwelcome truths: that whenever Islamists go into politics, they never
turn out to be moderates.
EU leaders are now, belatedly,
coming to realize that Erdogan is not their friend.
Last week, German politician David McAllister, the leading candidate
of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for next
month's European Parliament election, had a message
for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There is no room in the
European Union, McAllister said, for "the Erdogan Turkey of
2014." The politician, whose father was Scottish, is the former
Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Germany's second largest state, and a
heavyweight in Merkel's party.
The CDU has always been ambivalent about Turkey's EU membership. Like
other major parties in Germany, the CDU hopes to attract
the votes of the growing number of Germans of Turkish origin, while,
at the same time, the party is well aware that a majority of indigenous
Germans oppose Turkey's entry into the EU.
Europe's political leaders have been promising the Turks EU membership
for decades. The recent actions of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan,
however, offer the CDU a perfect excuse to distance itself from Turkey at
a moment when it is politically expedient to do so. Whenever national
elections are due, it is always electorally advantageous to cater to the
Turkish vote. However, when European elections are due and parties need
to convince as many indigenous voters as possible to turn out and vote,
it is rewarding to speak out against Turkey. Lambasting "the Erdogan
Turkey of 2014" is then an opportunity not to be missed.
"The Erdogan Turkey of 2014 has moved further away from the
standards of the European Union," McAllister said, referring to
Erdogan's recent ban of Twitter and YouTube in Turkey. The bans were
prompted by postings referring to corruption and abuse of power by Erdogan
cronies.
"The current assault on freedom of expression [in Turkey] in no
way conforms with European standards," McAllister said. He is right,
of course. However, one wonders why the CDU is suddenly disturbed by the
"current" assault, while it has been common knowledge for years
that the Erdogan regime does not respect freedom of expression. The
Erdogan Turkey of 2012 held the world record for jailing
journalists, but that did not seem to bother the CDU much at the
time.
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Turks protesting
the jailing of journalists. (Image source: Committee to Protect
Journalists)
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Also last week, the Netherlands, whose Prime Minister Mark Rutte is a
close ally of German Chancellor Merkel, decided to lobby the EU for the
suspension of EU funds to Turkey. Here, too, the reason
for the sudden Dutch concern is said to be Turkey's treatment of Twitter
and YouTube.
Europe's, and in particular Germany's, exasperation with Erdogan's
Turkey, however, has a deeper cause than the EU's concern for ordinary
Turks' access to social media outlets. Germany, which for over a century
has been a traditional ally of Turkey, is simply responding to the
cooling of Turkey's affection for Berlin. Ankara seems to be no longer
interested in close links with a Europe that is becoming increasingly
irrelevant in world politics.
That, too, became apparent last week. Indeed, writing for a pro-government
Turkish newspaper, Erdogan's chief economic advisor, Yigit Bulut, explained
last week that Europe is rapidly losing its political and economic
importance in the world. Bulut said that the United States is currently
the sole representative of Western values, while Europe no longer
matters. He consequently called on Turkey to "end the relations with
Europe," adding "we don't need [the EU] anymore."
Bulut's views come as no surprise. In August last year, Bulut declared
that there are only two-and-a-half leaders in the world who really
matter. The two leaders are Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin,
the "half-leader" is U.S. President Barack Obama.
In last week's op-ed piece, Bulut wrote: "In the new equation,
the new West for Turkey means only the U.S. We no longer need Europe and
its material and moral affiliates which may become a burden to us."
Last March, Turkey's Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci already announced
that by June, Turkey is going to re-open
the negotiations about its 1996 Customs Union Agreement with the EU.
The Customs Union Agreement is a prerequisite for EU membership, but
Zeybekci claims the agreement restricts the competitiveness of Turkey's
exports. The global potential of Turkey's exports outweighs the eventual
benefits of EU membership. This analysis is not very different from that
of British diplomat Iain Mansfield, who last week published a report arguing that a British
exit from the EU – the so-called Brexit – could lead to greater
trade with emerging economies and, hence, an increase of the British GDP.
Last February, another report reached similar conclusions regarding Nexit
– a Dutch exit from the EU.
The way in which the EU has mismanaged
the crisis in the Ukraine, creating the situation which allowed Putin to
annex Crimea and leaving a diplomatic and geopolitical mess which the
Americans now have to solve, will only have reinforced Ankara's view that
the EU is powerless.
But Europe's biggest failure vis-à-vis Turkey is another example of
its unwillingness to face unwelcome truths. Ironically, this
unwillingness has so far benefitted Erdogan, although it did not lead him
to respect the EU.
The truth, which Europe fails to confront, is that whenever Islamists
go into politics, they never turn out to be moderates. For years, EU
leaders such as Merkel saw Erdogan and his Islamist AKP party as the
proof that there was a moderate political Islam. They are now, belatedly,
coming to realize that he is not their friend. They hope that he will
lift his ban on the social media, so that they can welcome him back into
their midst, but they refuse to see that his agenda is one of Islamic
imperialism. And that the only politicians whose power he fears are
Putin's and, to half of that, Obama's.
A world where Turkey no longer respects, let alone fears, Europe, is a
more dangerous world than one in which the opposite was the case. David
McAllister announced on Merkel's behalf that there is no room for the
Erdogan Turkey of 2014 in the European Union. The really sad thing,
however, is that there is no longer any room for Europe and its values in
contemporary Turkey. And Europe is at least as much to blame for that
situation as Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan's
Theological Justification for His Dictatorial Stance
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"Both materially, and in
essence, sovereignty unconditionally and always belongs to Allah." —
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister, Turkey.
What is surprising is that so
many Western politicians, including EU-minded ones, apparently still
ignore what the consequences could be of such an ideology. Do they really
assume it could never happen to them?
Once again, Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is –
although ineffectively – cracking down on social
media, most notably Twitter, which public outrage forced him to
reinstate, and the latest municipal elections were again ridden with intimidation
and fraud.
On September 12, 1980, the Turkish military cracked down on religious
opposition movements that challenged the secular state, and took power
over the country. What stood out during these events was that Western
nations, with political structures vigorously opposed to military
involvement in civil politics, were actually relieved by the military's
action[1].
After all, one year earlier the secular and allied state of Iran had
transformed into a theocratic and hostile nation.
Over time, however, a worrying dynamic revealed itself: The Western
view of Islamic religious political movements changed, while the core
ideology and intentions of these movements did not. This phenomenon
coincided with the "New Left" consolidating its "March
through the institutions," referring to its takeover of the academy
and journalism.[2]
The West stopped seeing political Islam as an expansionist, possibly
antagonistic, ideology, and started actively to aid the consolidation of
Islamist power, particularly in Turkey. The EU stated that if Turkey were
ever going to join it, the country would have to abolish the influence
the Turkish military had over civil politics. It is reasonable that the
EU did not want a member state with a military that could undo a
democracy at will. But it was unreasonable of the EU to think that the
only way a democracy could be undone was by a military, or, in the
instance of Turkey, that of the then-secular
Turkish military. The EU may also have been naïve to dismiss out of hand
the claims of the Turkish military that Islamist doctrine was inherently
anti-Western.
True, modern Turkish Islamists, with the current Erdogan government as
a prime example, have started out by preaching their theocratic
intentions in more discrete and innocent-sounding ways. Erdogan for
example said: "All the schools will become [madrassa-like
religious] Imam Hatip schools"[3]
and "I am the Imam of Istanbul"[4], but it is not as if Erdogan is
a master of disguise. The truth was out there for those not taken by
wishful thinking. Erdogan, during his time as mayor of Istanbul,
1994-1998, had said
that "Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you
get off." What is somewhat less known is that Erdogan stated in
1998: "Our reference [guide] is Islam. Our only goal is an Islamic
state. They can never intimidate us. If the skies and the earth open up,
if storms blow on us, if the lava of volcanoes flow on us, we will never
change our way. My guide is Islam. If I cannot live according to Islam,
why live at all? [Turk], Kurd, Arab, Caucasian cannot be differentiated;
because these peoples are united under the roof of Islam."[5]
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Recep Tayyip
Erdogan in 2009. (Image source: World Economic Forum)
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What is even less known is that during the same period he repeatedly
and elaborately explained why his ideology is inherently dictatorial.
On video[6], Erdogan was saying: "You
cannot be both secular and a Muslim. You will either be a Muslim, or
secular. When both are together, they create reverse magnetism [they
repel one another]. For them to exist together is not a possibility.
Therefore, it is not possible for a person who says, 'I am a Muslim' to
go on and say, 'I am secular, too.' And why is that? Because Allah, the
creator of the Muslim, has absolute power and rule.... When [does the
sovereignty belong to the people]? It is only when they go to the polls
[every five years] that sovereignty belongs to the people. But both
materially, and in essence, sovereignty unconditionally and always
belongs to Allah."
Although statements such as that might sound arbitrary and irrelevant
to Western readers, they are not. The overarching theological drive of
many Islamists is – as for example re-emphasized
by one of the founder fathers of modern political Islam, Sayyid Qutb –
the implementation of the sovereignty of Allah on earth, Hakimiyyat
Allah. The Sovereignty of Allah, a divinely mandated set of laws,
known as Sharia, may not be undone by men: all sovereignty of the
people is inferior to the sovereignty of Allah. This means that Islamist
doctrine does not allow Islamist rulers to be removed from power
democratically. Such a view makes such a form of government inherently
autocratic.
Erdogan's views should not be surprising. He was an apprentice of Necmettin
Erbakan, the founding father of what is basically the Turkish Muslim
Brotherhood, known as Milli Görüs. What is surprising,
however, is that so many Western politicians, including EU-minded ones,
apparently still choose to ignore what the consequences could be of such
an ideology. Do they really assume it could never come to them?
[1] Henk
Driessen, In het huis van de islam, p.361
[2] Martin Bosma, De schijn elite van
de Valsemunters, p. 83
[3] Cumhuriyet, Sep. 17, 1994
[4] Hurriyet, Jan. 8, 1995
[5] From his Dec. 6, 1997 speech, Hurriyet,
Sep. 24, 1998
[6] Translation of Turkish text
derived from Facebook Page
of anti-Islamist Muslim commentator Tarek Fatah.
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