Two ringleaders within the Trojan Horse plot to impose Islamic values on Birmingham state schools are once again teaching, despite being banned from the profession.
Both Tahir Alam and Razwan Faraz are running informal classes, The Sunday Times has reported – Faraz under a false name in a different city.
An official report into the Trojan Horse scandal found that both Alam and Faraz were instrumental in a “co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action” to introduce an “intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos” into schools in Birmingham.
Girls and boys were segregated, “un-Islamic subjects” such as evolution were reduced or removed from the curriculum, and secular head teachers were bullied out of their jobs.
Alam, the former head of the Park View Educational Trust, was handed a permanent ban from teaching following the scandal, a ruling he plans to appeal at the High Court.
Despite the ban, however, he is still teaching children in informal classes at the Khidmat Centre, a community centre in Sparkbrook, Birmingham.
He plans to appeal the ban on the grounds that he finds extremist views “completely unacceptable”, yet his Facebook page reveals that he described the 9/11 attacks as “controlled demolition of three buildings”. He also shared a YouTube video which claimed that “Zionist neocons” bribed the British National Party to “ignore Jew paper money and attack Islam”.
Alam stated: “He who pays the piper calls the tune. Revealing!”
Questioned on his activities, Alam told the paper: “Why should I speak to you about that? I am absolutely suitable for teaching any children, I have done absolutely nothing wrong.” He added that he “did not recall” the Facebook posts.
Meanwhile, Faraz, who was deputy head of one of the Trojan Horse schools and is the brother of a convicted terrorist, is currently under an interim ban from teaching and is due in court to fight a permanent ban next month.
Despite this, Faraz has also been running classes on “raising emotionally intelligent boys” at £14-a-head, most recently in Halifax, West Yorkshire, on November 13, under the pseudonym ‘Riz Pilgrim’.
Claiming he is no longer an extremist, Faraz has said he is “confident” of overturning his teaching ban. Yet a Facebook account under the Pilgrim pseudonym shows that on the day of the Nice terrorist attack in France, in which 86 people lost their lives, Faraz berated those who showed sympathy as “idiots” who were privileging “white suffering” and condoning French colonialism.
Another similar post attacked those who expressed solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. Faraz wrote: “Those who did write ‘Je suis Charlie’ can go hang their heads in shame. Or maybe you are just a secret self-hating Nazi!”
Faraz has admitted to being Riz Pilgrim, but said the Facebook posts had been taken out of context. “I am campaigning against patriarchy in a huge way in the Muslim community,” he said.
In October it emerged that two teachers served with lifetime bans for their part in the Trojan Horse scandal have been allowed back into the profession because of a technical irregularity and alleged “unfairness”.
Teaching bans do not apply to informal schools not registered with the Department of Education, but MPs have suggested that they should.
“It is just wrong that such a key figure in Trojan Horse should have any role in education,” said Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr.
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