By one of those bizarre coincidences, I bumped into Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, on Tuesday night, just after I had accused him in print of being ‘the minister for Hizb ut Tahrir’. Quite extraordinarily, Mr Balls has spent much of the past seven days defending two primary schools run by supporters of this deeply nasty, racist and segregationist group after the Tories attacked his department’s decision to give them £113,000 of public money.
As you might expect, our meeting was brief. Mr Balls said I was disgraceful. I said I fully reciprocated the charge: Minister for Hizb ut Tahrir, while harsh, was entirely justified by the facts in this case. ‘No evidence has been found that extremist views are being taught. Give me the evidence,’ said Balls. Well, here it is, minister. Are these views ‘extremist’ enough for you?
The main evidence that Mr Balls has made a massive blunder is a chapter in a Hizb ut Tahrir pamphlet, ‘Education and Identity’, written by one Farah Ahmed. Mrs Ahmed is the head teacher of one of the two schools, and also a trustee of the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation (ISF), which runs them both. If I were a Muslim parent, I would not let my child within 20 miles of her.
In her chapter ‘The Western Education System and the British National Curriculum’, Mrs Ahmed attacks the religious studies elements of the national curriculum for ‘primarily push[ing] …the idea of “religious tolerance”.’ This, she says, ‘further aids distancing the Muslim child from the concept of Islam being the only reference point.’
She criticises the curriculum’s ‘systematic indoctrination’ of Muslim children ‘to build model British citizens’ and to ‘integrate all individuals into the fabric of secular society and develop them as personalities who uphold the values adopted by the society around them’.
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