British schools run by Islamic group Blair pledged to ban

Members of a radical Muslim group that Tony Blair promised to ban after the July 7 bombings have set up two schools in Britain to educate primary age children. The Islamic Shaksiyah Foundation, a registered charity that runs private schools in Haringey, north London, and in Slough in Berkshire, was established two years ago by female members of the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Between them, the schools educate more than 100 children. A 2005 Ofsted inspection report for the school in Slough was glowing about its work, stating: “The school’s provision for the pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is very good.”

The schools’ curriculum contains elements of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ideology, which calls for the union of all Muslim states into a worldwide empire, the khilafah (caliphate).

Hundreds of Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters were gathering yesterday at the Alexandra Palace in north London for a conference on how to realise the khilafah. The group is also planning a global convention next Sunday for which it has booked a stadium with a capacity of 100,000 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The group has an estimated 2,000-4,000 active supporters in Britain and continues to operate openly despite Blair’s promise to proscribe it. Although Hizb ut-Tahrir states it is nonviolent, the organisation has radicalised a number of British Muslims who have gone on to commit terrorist acts after leaving the group. One is thought to be Omar Sharif, the Derby-born Muslim who tried to blow himself up outside a bar in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2003. His partner, Asif Hanif, killed three people in the suicide attack.

According to the Islamic Shaksiyah Foundation’s curriculum document, children aged 7-8 are taught “our rules and laws come from Allah” and asked to contrast Islam with “other belief systems where human beings make rules”. At age 9-10 children should be taught: “There must be one khali-fah [ruler of the caliphate].” Tahir Alam, education spokesman at the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), said he had seen the khilafah being taught as a historical subject, but never as an ideological principle. “I know a lot of schools up and down the country and I’ve never seen khilafah being taught [in this way] at any school,” said Alam. “We’re in Britain and we’re dealing with a curriculum that prepares you to be a citizen of this country so I don’t really see the relevance for why a school should have that scheme of work.”

The people running the schools, which opened about two years ago, have close links to some of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s most prominent members. Yusra Hamilton, proprietor of both schools and one of three members of the foundation’s board of trustees, has spoken at Hizb ut-Tahrir events and is the wife of Taji Mustapha, media spokesman for the organisation, whose name is Arabic for “party of Liberation”. Farah Ahmed, head teacher of the ISF’s Slough school and author of its religious curriculum, is the sister-in-law of Majid Nawaz, a British member of the party who was jailed and allegedly tortured by the Egyptian authorities in 2002 for spreading Hizb ut-Tahrir literature.

The author of the school’s history curriculum, Themina Ahmed, has previously written for Hizb ut-Tahrir about her hatred of western society and desire to see it destroyed. Ahmed wrote in the July 2001 issue of Khilafah Magazine: “The world will, insha-Allah [God willing], witness the death of the criminal capitalist nation of America and all other [infidel] states when the army of jihad is unleashed upon them.”

Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University’s centre for intelligence and security studies and author of a report on extremism on British campuses, warned: “This is a matter of grave concern. The government needs to take another look at proscribing Hizb ut-Tahrir.”

The party has operated in Britain since the mid-1980s but it is part of a much larger worldwide movement, founded in Palestine in 1953, that claims up to 10m supporters in 40 countries from Malaysia to Scandinavia. It is banned in Germany, Russia and throughout the Middle East because of its antisemitism and its stated aim to establish a global Islamic state. It also calls for the destruction of Israel and the reunion of all lands that were ever under Muslim rule — including parts of southern Spain — through jihad if necessary.

Until a month after the July 7 bombings, when the group became far more cautious following Blair’s pledge, it was possible to obtain antisemitic literature on the group’s British websites. One leaflet stated: “The Jews are a poisoned dagger thrust into the heart of the Islamic [nation], an evil cancerous gland which spreads deep within the Islamic countries.” A short paragraph with the heading “What can Muslims in Britain do to reestablish the khilafah” went on to state that Muslims in Britain “should not become integrated into the corrupt western society and accept their diseased notions of democracy freedom and capitalism”. Recently, it was claimed Hizb ut-Tahrir had tried to recruit one of the suspects in June’s alleged terrorist plot against targets in London and Glasgow.

One parent whose child had attended the Islamic Shaksiyah school in Haringey said most parents knew the teachers were from Hizb ut-Tahrir. Despite this parents enrolled their children because it was “very well run”. The parent said that even though the school gave a rudimentary education in Hizb ut-Tahrir, children were not pressurised into joining the group. She said teachers often invited parents to Hizb ut-Tahrir events and discussions to try to recruit them. Neither the foundation nor Hizb ut-Tahrir would reply to questions put to them. In a previous statement Hamilton has said the curriculum was a result of “comprehensive research” and denied that either school sought to propagate the views of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Home Office said the issue of whether to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir was under “constant review.

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Smart Australian kids wise up to useless education

Record numbers of Queensland high school graduates are snubbing university to chase "instant cash in the strong labour market. The rush to work comes as new research shows the number of Year 12 students who have decided to defer tertiary study has risen sharply in the past two years. Students admit they are weighing up the costs of taking out loans from the Government for tertiary courses when some high school graduates are earning up to $1200 a day in parts of north Queensland as bricklayers.

Universities face the long-term challenge of competing for a "relatively static pool of potential students", experts say. Professor Kerri-Lee Krause, director of the Griffith Institute for Higher Education, told The Sunday Mail: "It's no longer just a given that Year 12 students see university as the obvious pathway. "Universities need to be mindful of how they market themselves and we're seeing evidence of that even now with more flexible options with courses."

Education researcher David Phillips, from KPA Consulting, analysed tertiary admission applications and found that there had been no increase in Queensland Admissions Centre applicants fot the last 15 years despite Queensland school leavers growing more than 20 per cent in that time. There were 9000 more applicants for universities in 1993 than there were in 2006," Mr Phillips said.

University campuses are continuing to grow only because mature-age and overseas students make up the shortfall. Also concerning for universities is the trend of deferring study, with about 600 Year 12 students taking a break in 1993-94 compared with 2700 in 2005-06. "This number has risen very sharply, especially in the last two years," Mr Phillips said.

Mandy Coles,l7, of Varsity Lakes, was accepted by Bond University for a Bachelor of Business, but has opted to pursue a management career with fashion store Supre. Ms Coles estimates her two-year, full- time course at the private university would have cost $74,000, less about $300 per week in study assistance. "As soon as I turn 19, I'm on more than $12 an hour (at Supre). It's a lot better than the cost of going to university," she said.

The above article by Paul Weston appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on August 5, 2007

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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