A Muslim father warned the Prime Minister about attempts to impose hard line Islamist practices at one the Birmingham schools involved in the Trojan Horse scandal. Mohammed Zabar told the Mail on Sunday that he had emailed the Prime Minister’s Office in February, before the scandal blew up, but received no reply.
His ten-year-old daughter attends Oldknow Academy, one of the schools investigated over an alleged fundamentalist plot to take over secular British schools and impose harsh Islamic practices on the students.
Mr Zabar says he warned the government about the school overemphasising Islamic teaching, claiming the school had no Christmas celebrations and yet closed for a Muslim festival.
The scandal finally came to light in March, when a letter, now believed to be faked, was handed to police and the local council, detailing plans by extremists to take over schools by infiltrating their governing bodies, undermining teachers and appointing new staff based on their religion.
One report said that pupils as young as six at Oldknow Academy were taught that Western women were “white prostitutes”. There were also claims that fundamentalists managed to push out the head teacher because she opposed the increasing ‘Islamisation’ of the school.
Mr Zabar said: “I was angry and frustrated that my concerns had been so easily dismissed.
“When the Trojan Horse scandal broke I wrote to them again saying perhaps they might want to reassess my information in light of recent evidence. I never had a reply to that one.It was distressing and disappointing to have my concerns ignored.”