02 July 2014

Trojan Horse: schools erect a straw man

One of the oldest tactics by wrongdoers and their allies is to ignore the actual allegations made against them and instead misrepresent the charges as ones they can truthfully deny. With grinding obviousness, that’s precisely what the “Trojan Horse” schools in Birmingham are doing now.

In a letter published in (where else) the Guardian, a group of the schools’ supporters announce the launch of the “Putting Birmingham Schoolkids First” campaign to “challenge the false and divisive allegation that [Trojan Horse] is a problem of systematic radicalisation, extremism or terrorism.”

The latter is a particularly brazen straw man. I think we can all agree that none of the schools ever taught their pupils how to make bombs and that no one in Birmingham became a terrorist as a result of a segregated biology lesson.

[A COMMENT] This article hits the nail on the head and reaffirms everything I know for a fact and have been saying for months. Even posting this may get me in trouble because the people in this affair are not good people, but I'm sick of it and I'm sick of hiding from them.

These schools and the rhetoric of this putting birmingham school kids first campaign have drawn divisions in my community that even 9/11 could not even achieve. Selfish people, all of them, and yes, using small children for their own gains is absolutely hideous and nauseating.

A certain little boys mother actually asked my husband to attend the meeting because, she whispered, we need more white faces there. There has been a lot of that going on too. [The Telegraph] Read more