Five Chinese Crackers takes up John Ware’s Panorama documentary “British Schools, Islamic Rules”, pointing out that the programme relied on insinuation and general accusations that were not backed up by any precise facts or figures.

It fed into an anti-Muslim climate promoted by the right-wing press, who seized on the programme in order to claim that children “as young as six” are taught material that appears in textbooks used by fifteen-year-olds and invent scenarios of “ranting fanatics preaching at them”.

5cc concludes that Ware’s progamme “leaves far too much to the imagination, which is easily influenced by creepy music and shaky hidden camera footage, and far too much goes unexplained. When we’re being warned that right wing extremism is feeding Islamic extremism (which – along with exaggerated and alarmist coverage of ordinary Muslims – is feeding right wing extremism and on and on and on) we need an investigation like this to be thorough and authoritative.

“Instead we have vague claims and infuriating ‘aha! Found you out!’ style finger pointing followed by scary music and hidden cameras recording someone picking up a book that might have said something nasty and antisemitic and might have been taught alongside some other books that might have said something else and might have been used to poison children’s minds.”