Thursday, April 17, 2014

UK: Probe of Islamic Takeover Plot Widens


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UK: Probe of Islamic Takeover Plot Widens

by Soeren Kern
April 17, 2014 at 5:00 am
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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.
The former headmaster of Saltley School in Birmingham resigned following a plot by Islamist fanatics to oust him. (Image source: Screenshot from BBC video)
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.
Related Topics:  United Kingdom  |  Soeren Kern

Turkey No Longer Respects Europe

by Peter Martino
April 17, 2014 at 4:00 am
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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.
Turks protesting the jailing of journalists. (Image source: Committee to Protect Journalists)
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.
Related Topics:  Turkey  |  Peter Martino

Erdogan's Theological Justification for His Dictatorial Stance

by Timon Dias
April 17, 2014 at 3:00 am
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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]
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2009. (Image source: World Economic Forum)
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.
Related Topics:  Turkey  |  Timon Dias

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