The Trojan Horse scandal is repeating itself under our noses

Religious hardliners are, once again, plotting to divide our society. We must stop them

The invite seemed innocuous. Tomorrow evening, at a community centre in Birmingham, parents, teachers and others would gather to discuss the future of schools in Britain’s second city. One pictures a scene from David Cameron’s Big Society: local people pulling together with experts to improve the education of their children. Sadly, the meeting was no such thing. It was instead a shocking attempt to deny the Trojan Horse scandal of 2014 in plain sight of the public and authorities.

When The Daily Telegraph discovered this, and contacted the owners of the venue, they rightly cancelled it. It may still be held elsewhere. But even if it is not, that is unlikely to be the end of this plot.

Behind the event was a campaigning group called Mend, or Muslim Engagement and Development. It is frequently accused of promoting extremism. One of its directors, Azad Ali, openly calls himself an Islamist and says “no one agrees” with democracy if it comes “at the expense of not implementing the sharia”. He denied that the Westminster attack in March was an act of terrorism, and lost a libel case with newspapers that called him “a hardline Islamic extremist who supports the killing of British and American soldiers in Iraq”.

Mend was previously known as iengage, an organisation about which the Home Office had concerns when I worked for the latter between 2010 and 2015. Its role providing secretarial services to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia ended in 2011 after allegations about extremism. According to Mak Chishty, a recently retired Metropolitan Police commander, if we do not “name and shame” Mend and similar organisations, “we risk having our safety and security threatened”.

What is Mend up to in Birmingham? Activists were caught on school grounds handing flyers for the event to parents. The flyers show they are trying to reopen the wounds of the “Trojan Horse” plot that was exposed almost four years ago when Ofsted discovered an “organised campaign” to target schools “to alter their character and ethos”. Headteachers were forced out as governors imposed “a narrow faith-based ideology in what are non-faith schools”.

Peter Clarke, who was asked to investigate, found “clear evidence that young people were being encouraged to accept, unquestioningly, a particular hardline strand of Sunni Islam” which raised “concerns about their vulnerability to radicalisation in the future”. Shady Alsuleiman, described by Clarke as “a preacher known for his extremist views”, was invited to address students, while Anwar al-awlaki, the Al Qaeda terrorist, was reportedly praised in assembly. The acting principal of one school allegedly told students: “white teachers do not have your best interests at heart because they’re... non-believers”. At a primary school, children were warned about the dangers of “white prostitutes”.

What happened in the schools caught up in the Trojan Horse plot is clearly established. Yet Mend’s flyer for tomorrow’s cancelled event promised to tell parents “the facts”. We know from what Mend says that those “facts” will be a grotesque distortion of the truth. The flyer complains about “the stigmatisation of a community”, but as Clarke’s report found, the only stigmatisation was that orchestrated by the plotters. They targeted non-muslims, Muslims who do not adhere to hardline Sunni Islam, and minorities including gay people. Mend warns of “discrimination against outstanding teachers”, yet the Trojan Horse plotters hounded successful teachers and heads out of their jobs. On their watch, there was nepotism and “inappropriate recruitment and promotion procedures”.

Mend warns parents that the action taken following the Trojan Horse issue will cause “exam failure for a generation of children”. Yet Rockwood Academy – previously known as Park View, and the school at the heart of the plot – was upgraded by Ofsted from “inadequate” to “good” just two years after its new leadership team arrived. In fact, on the Government’s official performance measure, Progress 8, Rockwood scores +0.82. This means that, in the most important subjects, Rockwood pupils advance by nearly a whole academic grade faster than similar children elsewhere, making it one of England’s highest-performing schools.

So Mend’s propaganda is false from start to finish. Yet nobody would have been at tomorrow’s event to contradict them. Among the listed speakers was Tahir Alam, the chairman of governors at Park View at the time of Trojan Horse. He has been banned from involvement in schools since 2015 after the Government concluded that he had tried to “undermine the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths or beliefs”. Clarke found that he was “the key person determining the policies and activities at Park View School” and that under him Park View “sought to export its Islamising blueprint” to other schools.

Alam was due to speak alongside an academic called John Holmwood. He believes that official accounts of Trojan Horse give a “false narrative”, comparable with what happened after the Hillsborough disaster, and are used to “criticise multiculturalism”. Another academic, Shamim Miah, was also to speak. He claims Britain’s counterterrorism policies “de-humanise” Muslims. Joining them were Salma Yaqoob, a former Respect Party politician who claimed Trojan Horse was used to “stigmatise Muslims”, and – incredibly – Kevin Courtney of the National Union of Teachers.

After the pain caused by Trojan Horse, it is appalling that Mend and Tahir Alam were plotting to mislead the local community again. Alam has been banned from schools for good reasons: the city council should tell parents the truth. Courtney should have refused to give the event the legitimacy that his attendance implied. And it should not have taken the attention of a newspaper for the authorities to ask the venue to cancel this event. They would not hesitate if they were dealing with racists or fascists; nor should they in this case. The people behind Trojan Horse are trying to do it all over again, and right under our noses. Now, at least, we know.