Daily Stormer The Most Censored Publication in History
Daily Mail
June 1, 2014
Filled with endless pictures of smiling children, the ‘information and guidance’ booklet must have looked anodyne when it tumbled off the press a few years ago.
It was produced by the Muslim Council of Britain and contained — in the words of the foreword — 72 pages of advice to schools designed to ‘promote greater understanding of the faith, religious and cultural needs’ of pupils from an Islamic background.
Even the title seemed, on the face of things, uncontroversial. It was called simply: Meeting The Needs Of Muslim Pupils In State Schools.
Appearances can be deceptive, though. For within days of its publication, this outwardly unremarkable booklet had sparked an explosive political controversy.
For, in the eyes of a host of vociferous critics, it amounted to nothing less than a blueprint for the ‘Islamicisation’ of Britain’s entire education system.
To that end, it called for sweeping changes in the way everything from music, art and sports, to biology and religious education were taught in schools.
One passage endorsed a ban on ‘unIslamic’ activities, such as dancing, for Muslim pupils.
Another said swimming lessons should be halted during Ramadan, because ‘the potential for swallowing water [when fasting] is very high’. A third, regarding behavioural codes, declared that ‘girlfriend/boyfriend as well as homosexual relationships’ are ‘not acceptable practices according to Islamic teachings’.
The booklet issued hawkish decrees on everything from architecture — it called for single-sex prayer rooms to be built at every school — to extra-curricular activities. School balls, discos and fashion shows should be avoided so as not to ‘inadvertently exclude’ Muslim parents and pupils, it cautioned.
So, too, should fund-raising raffles, since gambling is forbidden by the Koran, Islam’s holy book.
At meal-times, meanwhile, it said children should be offered halal food, sourced from animals killed without first being stunned — the most ‘pure’ form of religious slaughter, dubbed cruel by animal welfare campaigners.
During biology lessons, many aspects of sex education, including teaching about contraception and the use of diagrams showing reproductive organs, would be regarded by Muslims as ‘completely inappropriate and encouraging morally unacceptable behaviour’.
In drama, Nativity plays were off-limits for Muslim pupils, while ‘parents may have reservations regarding participation in [any] theatrical plays or acting that involves physical contact between males and females’.
Art teachers, it added, ‘should avoid encouraging Muslim pupils from producing three-dimensional imagery of humans’, since that is also outlawed by the Koran.
‘Some Muslims may hold a very conservative attitude towards music and may seek to avoid it altogether,’ read a passage on music lessons.
‘Most Muslim parents will find little or no educational merit or value in dance or dancing after early childhood and may even find it objectionable.’ As for PE, the booklet said Muslim girls should wear full-length tracksuits and headscarves when taking part in even highly vigorous exercise, while teachers must avoid the ‘objectionable’ practice of allowing mixed-gender groups to play contact sports such as football or basketball.
Mixed-gender swimming sessions, even for primary school children, were ‘unacceptable for reasons of modesty and decency to Muslim parents’.
Finally, the booklet argued that all British children should have the option of studying Arabic, while staff should consider segregating morning assembly, with ‘separate acts of collective worship’ for Muslim and Christian students.
If you think some of that advice sounds divisive and extreme, not to say at odds with traditionally British educational values, you are not alone. For the contents of Meeting The Needs Of Muslim Pupils In State Schools sparked immediate controversy.
In the days after its publication in February 2007, front-page newspaper reports savaged its ‘Taliban-style’ decrees. Several MPs and pressure groups attacked the booklet — which ended up being pulled from the Muslim Council of Britain’s (MCB) website — as dangerous and divisive.
‘The MCB needs to realise it has to move closer to the rest of the community, not away from it,’ said the Conservative MP Greg Hands, who is now a Government whip.
The National Secular Society dubbed the report ‘a recipe for disaster’. And the moderate Sufi Muslim Council, which claims to represent more Muslims than the MCB, said it had misunderstood the nature of Ramadan.
Lost in the noise, however, was the identity of the author behind this report. Perhaps surprisingly, he was neither named nor quoted in any of the mainstream coverage that followed its publication.
Today, however, this individual — and his apparently-conservative beliefs — seems very relevant indeed.
He is crucial, in fact, to fully understanding a different, but no less chilling scandal that has in recent months raised another pressing set of questions about the relationship between Islam and the state education system.
The man in question is called Tahir Mahmo Alam. He is 45 years old, lives in Birmingham and intriguingly (given the conservative views espoused above) he happens to be the central figure in the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ affair.
The story broke two months ago when a strange but shocking letter was leaked to newspapers.
Typed in italics and apparently unsigned and undated, it described a five-step strategy that Muslim extremists have supposedly been using to take over the running of a string of primary and secondary schools.
Their alleged ‘jihad’ was designed to ‘drip-feed our ideal for a Muslim school’ and went by the name Operation Trojan Horse.
It involved identifying target schools in predominately Muslim areas, getting sympathetic parents to join governing bodies and then using underhand methods to remove non-Muslim teachers from positions of influence.
After that, the curriculums, time-tables and cultures of the schools would be quietly altered to adhere to an Islamic ideal.
Alam, a governor of five schools in Birmingham, had supposedly ‘fine-tuned the Trojan Horse so it is totally invisible to the naked eye’, the letter said, allowing it to be quietly enacted across the city.
The plot would therefore spread to Bradford and Manchester, the letter continued, where Westernised teachers are ‘corrupting children with sex education, teaching about homosexuals, making children say Christian prayers and mixed swimming and sports’.
