In a week when twenty leading educationalists and Muslim leaders have questioned Ofsted’s impartiality in the Birmingham ‘Trojan Horse’ affair, education consultant Robin Richardson reflects on the factors behind its controversial recent inspections.
Category Archives: Resisting Islamophobia
Statement from Park View Educational Trust on Golden Hillock School
According to BBC News a leaked Ofsted report claims that pupils are not being protected from extremist views at a Birmingham school named in the so-called “Trojan Horse” inquiry. Golden Hillock School in Sparkhill was described as inadequate by inspectors.
You can read the Park View Educational Trust’s response here.
On anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Europe
Is Europe’s Islamophobia following the path of 19th century anti-Semitism? Sara R Farris sees some clear parallels.
Muslim Association of Iceland to sue over online hate speech
Pigs’ heads and bloodied pages of the Qur’an left on the Reykjavík mosque site last November
Salman Tamimi, founder of the Muslim Association of Iceland, and his lawyer, Helga Vala Helgadóttir, say it is important to make a stand against the hate speech which has recently been flaring up on the internet.
An article published on visir.is on Sunday with the heading ‘Could start to build mosque after the weekend’ sparked a lot of discussion. Some of the comments on the website were particularly harsh and were directed towards Salman and Ibrahim Sverrir Agnarsson, chair of the association.
Salman is bringing charges against those who made the comments on Vísir.
How the right exploits Christianity and secularism to attack Muslims
The European right is advocating a Christian identity for Europe not because it wants to promote Christianity but because it wants to push back against Islam and the integration of Muslims – or what the National Front calls “the Islamization of Europe.”
Public spaces have become a major battleground. There are bans on “head scarves and other signs of religious affiliation” in schools (in France) and on full-face veils on the streets (in France and Belgium), and efforts to block the construction of mosques (throughout Europe) or just minarets (in Switzerland, mosques are allowed but without their distinctive towers, the latter being considered the “expression of an intolerant culture”). The pushback against Islam also concerns the individual body, with, for example, campaigns to prohibit circumcision and halal food in Norway.
Notably, these measures are being advocated in the name of protecting not Christianity but liberal secularism. The hijab is said to offend women’s rights; circumcision, children’s rights; ritual slaughter, animal rights. Oriana Fallaci and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, two radical spokespersons for the feminist resistance to Islam, became darlings of the conservative right in Italy (Fallaci) and the Netherlands and America (Hirsi Ali).
This anti-Islam rhetoric is spreading to the mainstream. The coalition government of the Netherlands requires would-be immigrants to accept progressive values before they are given a residency visa. Applicants are asked whether they tolerate the mixing of boys and girls in school, gender equality, nudity in public and gay rights. Although all applicants must take these tests, given the concerns revealed in these questions and the demographics of migration into Europe, there can be little doubt that the exams are designed to challenge adherents to Islam. Such measures are unfair to Muslims, and they violate European states’ professed commitment to multiculturalism and the separation of church and state.
Olivier Roy condemns the hijacking of Christianity and secularism by right-wing Islamophobes.
Virginia: Muslim community disappointed with charges after man assaulted on train
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. (WJLA) — Leaders in the local Muslim community say the punishment for the suspect accused of committing a hate-filled assault against another man on a VRE train in Fairfax County isn’t tough enough. The assault happened on a VRE train on May 20. The alleged attacker has been arrested and charged, but leaders say they aren’t satisfied.
The victim, a Muslim man, was headed home from his government job when the alleged assailant, 58-year-old Patrick Sullivan of Woodbridge, who also works for the government, became enraged that the victim was talking on the phone to his wife in his native language of Bengali.
Police say Sullivan began shouting and cursing, telling the man to speak English. That wasn’t the worst of it, though – according to the police report, the suspect struck the man in the head and threatened to throw him off the train, and even suggested to the conductor who tried to intervene that maybe the victim had a bomb, since he was Muslim.
Bowe Bergdahl and the resurgence of conservative Islamophobia
The debate over the prisoner-swap deal spotlights how anti-Muslim sentiment on the right has actually grown in the last decade, argues Peter Beinart.
When did Michael Gove become the government’s expert on Muslims or extremism?
“Michael Gove believes there has been a plot by extremist Muslims to take over schools in Birmingham and is preparing to drive them out,” reports the Times on its front page. “The education secretary is convinced that a small group of extremists has infiltrated schools in the city with tactics similar to those used by the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party in the 1980s, a senior source has said.”
Here’s the kicker: “Mr Gove blames their influence on a reluctance within Whitehall, especially in the Home Office, to confront extremism unless it develops into terrorism and believes that a robust response is needed to ‘drain the swamp’.”
Since when, however, did Michael Gove become an expert on counter-extremism strategies? Robust or otherwise?
Mehdi Hasan questions the credentials of the politician responsible for the “Trojan Horse” witch-hunt.
Murfreesboro mosque fight laid to rest after Supreme Court ruling
For years, opponents of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro vowed to take their legal fight to shut down the mosque all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. That fight ended Monday (June 2), when the nation’s highest court declined to hear their case.
The four-year conflict over construction of the mosque, which opened in 2012, brought national attention to this Bible Belt city of 112,000 about 30 miles south of Nashville. Hundreds marched in protest after Rutherford County officials approved plans for the mosque in 2010. Televangelist Pat Robertson labeled the Islamic center a “mega mosque” and claimed Muslims were taking over Murfreesboro. An arsonist set fire to construction equipment on the building site.
Mosque opponents eventually filed a suit against Rutherford County, seeking to block construction of the worship space. On the surface, the fight was over the minutiae of Tennessee’s sunshine, or public notice, laws. Mosque foes claimed local officials failed to give adequate notice of a meeting where plans for the mosque’s construction were approved.
But a thriving anti-Muslim movement in Tennessee fueled the fight. Mosque foes asserted that the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom did not apply to the mosque. In court, Joe Brandon Jr., a lawyer for mosque foes, said Islam is not a religion, and he argued that the mosque was a threat to the community.
Initially, a local judge ruled for the mosque foes and ordered a halt to mosque construction. But a federal court quickly overruled that decision, paving the way for the mosque to open in 2012. A state appeals court also later overturned the lower court decision.
Local Muslims, many of whom had worshipped in the community for years, found themselves having to defend their faith and their status as American citizens at the trial.
Education experts voice fury over Ofsted’s ‘Trojan Horse’ schools inquiry
An ideology “at odds with traditional British values” has taken hold at the schools inspectorate Ofsted, a group of leading educationalists and Muslim leaders have warned.
Led by Sir Tim Brighouse, a former chief education officer in Birmingham, the 20 experts – unhappy at the way Ofsted has conducted inspections into schools allegedly infiltrated by conservative Muslims – say in a letter to the Guardian that it is at risk of compromising political independence by producing “tarnished reports”.
Their intervention comes days before Ofsted publishes results of an inspection of 21 schools ordered by education secretary, Michael Gove, after claims conservative Muslims were trying to infiltrate the governing bodies of Birmingham schools in a plot dubbed Operation Trojan Horse.
On Tuesday, further evidence also emerged of abrupt shifts in Ofsted’s inspection results, with a leaked inspection report showing that a second secondary school in the city that had been previously rated as good or outstanding in November 2013 is expected to be downgraded to inadequate when its new report is published next week.
Describing the mass inspection as “a landmark in the history of education in these islands”, Brighouse and the other signatories argue: “First-hand accounts of the Ofsted inspections that have emerged are disturbing. They suggest that inspectors were poorly prepared and had an agenda that calls into question Ofsted’s claim to be objective and professional in its appraisal of standards in schools serving predominantly Muslim pupils.
“It is beyond belief that schools which were judged less than a year ago to be outstanding are now widely reported as ‘inadequate’, despite having the same curriculum, the same students, the same leadership team and the same governing body. This is uncharted territory, with Ofsted being guided by an ideology at odds with the traditional British values which schools are meant to espouse, particularly fairness, justice and respect for others.”