Bradford School Implicated in Trojan Horse Copycat Plot

Bradford has become the latest British city named as a target for Islamists who have sought to take over schools and radicalise young children. The BBC reports that Councillor Faisal Khan, who previously represented George Galloway MP’s ‘Respect Party’, visited one of the main ‘Trojan Horse’ schools in Birmingham, seeking to “replicate” the situation there. 

Khan now stands accused of pushing a head teacher out of a school, forcing gender segregation, and pursuing an “Islamic agenda”.

In echoes of what took place in Birmingham, Cllr Khan is accused of forcing Carlton Bolling College to bring in segregation based on gender for school trips and after-school workshops. The governors are also said to have questioned whether a broad religious education which taught about different faiths was appropriate for their pupils.

The BBC also claims to have seen documents that show the schools head teacher Chris Robinson left her position in 2012 because she felt her reputation, integrity and leadership were being questioned by governors.

Nick Weller, from the Bradford Partnership, an organisation which offers support to schools and head teachers, agrees she was pushed out.

Mr Weller said: “I think an excellent, outstanding head teacher has been driven out by a governing body because she would not give in to their agenda of making it reflect the culture and traditions of the Muslim students, more than it did, or more than is right and proper for a state-funded school.

“There’s a co-ordinated attempt by a small group of unrepresentative people, whose views are not shared by most of the Muslim parents that I talk to, to gain greater control of governing bodies in Bradford and advance their agenda.”

Mrs Robinson was pushed out despite having recently been announced as runner-up in the secondary head teacher of the year category in the Pearson National Teaching Awards.

Another school that Cllr Khan was involved with, Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College, had its entire governing body fired in April and replaced with an interim executive committee. The council stepped in after the school’s inspector Ofsted said Laisterdyke “required improvement”, the appointment of the new board was approved by the Secretary of State for Education.

At the time of the inspection Ofsted blamed the schools problems on a governors getting involved in operational matters and undermining the management team.

Cllr Khan was originally elected for George Galloway’s Respect Party, which is often accused of being close to radicals. Galloway, who works for Iran’s Press TV, and who recently claimed to have advised Syrian tyrant Bashar al Assad, met Saddam Hussein in 2002 and told him: “I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds [until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem].”

Cllr Khan recently left the Respect Party and now sits as an independent. He said of the allegations against him: “At the end of the day we have a school that has 90-95% Muslim children, we meet their needs – whether it is halal food, whether it is prayer within school [or] wearing the hijab.

“We don’t want children – irrespective of their background – to compromise on their faith.”

The local MP in Bradford, David Ward, said: “We cannot allow the situation that has developed in Birmingham, where it has spread to many more schools than are currently affected in Bradford. It really needs to be dealt with before it gets out of hand.”

The news in Bradford means there are now three pre-dominantly Muslim areas where allegations of radical infiltration are being made. It started with the Trojan Horse plot in Birmingham where five schools were effectively taken over by the Department for Education earlier this week.

Then, as reported on Breitbart London, the Poplar and Limehouse MP Jim Fitzpatrick claimed there had been an attempt to infiltrate Tower Hamlet’s Labour Party. He said the party had rejected “several hundred” membership applications from suspected radicals. In addition to this there is a political party Tower Hamlet’s First that has the Mayoralty and 18 councillors, all of whom are Muslims.

Today the allegation in Bradford is that there are councillors who are using their elected position to Islamise schools. This would suggest a pattern is developing and will add to fears that these sorts of infiltration tactics are being used right across the country.

The government has pledged action as they fear that creating these Islamic schools may add to violent extremism. Not least because in some cases Christian women were referred to as “white prostitutes” in school assemblies and radical hate preachers were invited to address classrooms.