Oh wow, the Mail contacted our very own Saif Rahman.
The Trojan Horse files: In their own words, the disturbing views of teachers at the heart of the row over extremism in schoolsPark View School teacher Inam Ul Haq Anwar backs Islamic extremists on Facebook
Staff member Abid Ali advocates women and girls should wear the veil
Birmingham school is at centre of 'Trojan Horse' takeover plot allegations
On his Facebook page, Inam Ul Haq Anwar doesn’t call himself a senior teacher at Park View School, which is a large secondary in the multi-cultural Small Heath area that’s just east of Birmingham city centre.
Instead, the heavily-bearded head of department describes his profession much more grandly — as an ‘architect of minds’.
If you were to spend a few minutes, as I have, browsing his Facebook profile, you would get a very clear idea of what motivates him to fulfil this remit.
Like most of the 600-plus pupils he teaches, Anwar is Muslim.
Deeply religious, he posts regular comments about Islamic practices and protocols, points readers to website articles supportive of Islam, and often quotes from the Koran.
He also appears to be highly political. In recent weeks, Anwar has condemned incursions by Israel into Arab-controlled Gaza (which he describes as ‘our Holocaust’), criticised U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan and made pointed attacks on Ukip’s ‘retard’ leader Nigel Farage.
On another occasion, he strayed into yet more contentious territory: posting two outspoken messages voicing support for an individual who was appearing in court charged with terror offences.
‘We need everyone to make dua [pray] that [the alleged terrorist] is released and that Allah Almighty alleviates him from this suffering,’ read one, posted on the eve of the hearing.
The following day, after a court ruling, Anwar commented: ‘Know this was not the Judge’s decision, nor the corrupt Establishment’s. Or anyone else’s for that matter. This was Allah jalla wa’ala’s decision.’
He then posted a lengthy quote from the Koran, advising: ‘No matter how great the setback, the struggle between truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, must continue.’
This wasn’t the first time that this teacher, or ‘architect of minds’, had voiced support for an alleged Islamic extremist. Just before Christmas, he took to Facebook to celebrate the ‘great news’ that a bookshop owner from Birmingham nicknamed ‘Abu Bakr’ was to be released early from prison.
‘May Allah make it easy for all those that have been wrongly imprisoned. Ameen!’ he declared.
Abu Bakr, whose real name is Ahmed Faraz, has been frequently described as ‘the terrorists’ favourite bookseller,’ because of the extremist literature his store sells, and the fact its customers have included the leaders of the 7/7 London bomb plot.
He was jailed in 2011 after being convicted of 11 counts of possessing and disseminating terrorist publications. However, he was released last year after winning an appeal on a legal technicality — the development Anwar was applauding.
All of which begs a simple question: should a teacher charged with shaping the minds of 600 impressionable Muslim schoolchildren be publicly supporting alleged extremists?
‘Certainly not,’ says Saif Rahman, of the centrist Humanist and Cultural Muslim Association.
‘These are the words of a firebrand. Looking at this guy’s Facebook feed, it rings alarm bells. If he’s saying stuff like this in public, one can only imagine what he’s saying to the kids he teaches in private.’
Indeed one can. But Anwar’s comments are all the more disturbing because his place of work, Park View School, is currently at the centre of the hugely contentious ‘Trojan Horse’ affair.
The scandal — in which a cabal of Muslim extremists is alleged to have taken over the running of Birmingham primary and secondary schools, and ‘Islamicised’ their syllabuses — has dominated the news agenda this week.
This is partly due to an explosive dispute between Education Secretary Michael Gove and Home Secretary Theresa May over whose department is most to blame for failing to thwart the extremists.
Next week, the row will continue to simmer thanks to the publication of the first of three separate public inquiries into the affair, by the schools inspectorate Ofsted.
Until now, coverage has focused on hard-line governors — with an investigation in the Mail last Saturday detailing how they are said to have driven out non-Muslim teachers at a string of schools.
Our report told how, once the alleged ‘Trojan Horse’ plotters took control of governing bodies, there were reports of segregation in classrooms, banning of mixed PE, swimming lessons, drama and music lessons, and altering of syllabuses to bring religious education, biology, and sex education in line with conservative Islamic teachings.
Extremist preachers have been invited to address assemblies, girls have been encouraged to wear the veil, and, at Park View School, teenage boys have been informed in a sex education class that husbands are entitled to rape their wives.
Today’s second Mail investigation raises further serious questions.
Our research suggests that the schools are employing a network of young male teachers who share highly conservative — some might say extreme — Islamic views.
Several anti-extremist organisations, which have seen these teachers’ Facebook posts, believe they raise questions over whether many of the men (including Inam Ul Haq Anwar) ought to be in a position of influence over impressionable teenagers.
Douglas Murray, of the respected Henry Jackson Society think-tank, commented: ‘It is scandalous that somebody who describes himself as “an architect of minds” should also be somebody who supports such men as Abu Bakr.’
‘Did he share his apparent extremism with the pupils whose minds he was claiming to mould?
‘Did he seek to influence them in the classroom?’
These questions will only become more pressing when Ofsted’s report is published early next week. It is believed to have found evidence of malpractice in at least 16 Birmingham schools.
At least six are expected to be placed in ‘special measures’. This is the most serious form of sanction available and allows Ofsted to replace teachers and governors, and even shut down a school.
One of those six is Park View School, where a welter of apparent malpractice has been reported over recent weeks by the Press. There have been reports of the deliberate ‘Islamicisation’ of GCSE syllabuses and of teenagers being taught that homosexuality is evil.
During religious education classes, pupils have allegedly been given lists of Christian teachers and told to try to convert them.
Senior staff stand accused — by a former teacher — of preaching ‘mind-blowing’ anti-western propaganda in assemblies.
Given this backdrop, the attitudes, loyalties, and political views that head of department Inam Ul Haq Anwar and some of his teaching colleagues see fit to express via Facebook make sobering reading.
Take, for example, Abid Ali, the head of extra-curricular activities at the school, where staff have been accused of forcing teenage girls to wear headscarves. Last month, Ali (who has a traditional Islamic long, flowing beard) posted a quote from the Koran to justify the use of Islamic dress.
He said: ‘Allah commanded the believing women to drape their garments over themselves, in order that they be known and not harmed, and to put their head scarves over their chests.’
Just five days earlier — the same day that a preliminary copy of Ofsted’s damning report into Park View was passed to the school — Ali declared: ‘Ofsted are corrupt.’
The previous week, he had posted a flyer advertising an ‘interesting’ public meeting in Birmingham where parents would discuss ‘raising Muslim children in the West’. It advised that ‘segregation will be observed’ at the event. The flyer went on to say: ‘It is only natural that as parents we seek to protect our children from the values of secular culture by inculcating within our children the pristine values of Islam.’
Doubtless Ali — who has also called on Facebook for alcohol to be ‘banned’ — does his bit to instil these ‘pristine values’ in pupils under his command.
Further insight into this teacher’s political leanings can be gleaned from a BBC news article he posted on Facebook last year about pornography being discovered on parliamentary computers in Westminster.
Alongside the post, Ali commented that such immoral behaviour was a further justification for Muslim women to wear veils. He began by asking: ‘Why would women choose to wear a veil?’
Then he continued: ‘Because we have sick perverted men hiding behind their ties pretending they respect women and advocate for women’s rights. But deep down they are sick and corrupt.’
Last summer, meanwhile, Ali published a series of punchy comments about global affairs.
One, posted while he was taking a group of children from Park View on a boating holiday, advised that he was closely watching events in Egypt, where the elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood had just been deposed in a coup by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Ali said: ‘All that occupys [sic] my mind is the reality, the hypocrisy, the mentality of the western world, and the brutality of Sisi and the way muslims [sic] are being killed.
‘We need a muslim khalifa [movement]. Where the people will be those of imaan [faith] and will be prepared to defend our muslim ummah [nation]. One ummah. Mohammed’s ummah. One deep islam. Fighting to save our religion from the zalims [tyrants].’
Of course, Ali’s posts — and those of his colleague Anwar — would have readily been accessible by Park View School’s headteacher, Mozz Hussain, who is ‘friends’ of both on the online social media site (but does not use Facebook to share his own political or social opinions).
Another teacher at Park View who uses Facebook is Saqqib Malik, the school’s head of history. He is ‘friends’ with a controversial extremist preacher called Shekih Shady Al Suleiman.
It has been widely reported that, last November, Park View organised an ‘extended Islamic assembly’ for pupils with the preacher, who has called on God to ‘destroy the enemies of Islam’.
Al-Suleiman has also asked God to ‘give victory to the Muslims in Afghanistan and Chechnya,’ to ‘give victory to all the Mujahideen all over the world’ and to ‘prepare us for the jihad’.
Park View’s School’s PR agency, Communitas, did not comment when provided with details of the social media activity of senior staff. And none of the teachers named above has responded to our invitation to discuss their posts.
Park View school’s staff are not the only ones at the centre of the ‘Trojan Horse’ inquiry to be spreading contentious views on Facebook, though.
A similar phenomenon can be seen at nearby Oldknow (an academy primary school in Small Heath), which is also under investigation and is expected imminently to be put into ‘special measures’ by Ofsted.
Here, Department for Education officials are reported to have found that some teachers led anti-Christian chanting in assemblies, banned the celebration of Christmas and stopped children from learning French because the country has banned the Islamic veil.
The school denies allegations of extremism. This week, teacher Samir Rauf told Channel 4 News that Ofsted had come into the school ‘with an agenda’.
However, Rauf is a member of a Facebook group entitled ‘Free Babar Ahmad’, dedicated to supporting the London-born extremist who was extradited to the U.S. and imprisoned last year, after pleading guilty to ‘conspiracy and providing material support to terrorism’.
Meanwhile, in February, Oldknow’s deputy principal, Mazhar Hussain Al Maazari, used Facebook to post an unforgiving comment calling for Muslims to disown those who leave the faith: ‘Do not love the one who does not love Allah,’ it read. ‘If they can leave Allah, they will leave you.’
The nature of such statements, made with apparent abandon by teachers entrusted with the education of young minds is profoundly worrying to anti-extremist campaigners, who rightly stress that they in no way reflect the peaceful views of the vast majority of British Muslims.
Saif Rahman, of the Humanist and Cultural Muslim Association, called last night for a further probe into the teachers whose Facebook feeds we have highlighted.
‘These comments speak to an environment where things have gone deeply wrong,’ he says.
‘They do not reflect the views of most progressive Muslims, and questions must be asked about how people making them are allowed to occupy senior positions in state-funded schools.’
Topic: 'Jihadist plot to take over Birmingham schools'