The Trojan Horse Affair

BRIAN REED

I did not really feel nice after I gave Hamza a tough time for going off on Richy Thompson, the British humanist.

And reality is, it wasn’t the primary time I would performed one thing like that, the place I referred to as him out for crossing traces I believed he should not be crossing as a journalist.

The first time was early on in our working collectively.

[PHONE RINGING]

HAMZA SYED

Hey.

BRIAN REED

Hey, Hamza.

How’s it going?

HAMZA SYED

It was my final week of journalism college, as I cramming to get my last venture performed, when Brian received in contact saying we would have liked to speak.

HAMZA SYED

I am good.

What’s good?

BRIAN REED

Properly, it is not nice, actually.

HAMZA SYED

Oh, God.

BRIAN REED

So I simply received this e mail.

HAMZA SYED

This was once we have been trying into Adderley Major college, looking for details about the pinnacle trainer, Rizvana Darr and the 4 educating assistants who mentioned their resignation letters had been faked.

When Brian requested data from the employment tribunal concerning the case, the tribunal contacted the folks concerned to ask whether or not they needed the data launched.

It seems, a few of them didn’t.

Brian began studying a letter to me that simply been despatched to the tribunal by the three Muslim TAs in response to his request.

BRIAN REED

The most important duty of a journalist is to report the information in a truthful, unbiased, and apolitical means, and to coach the general public about occasions. and points and the way they have an effect on their lives.

I don’t consider these matter will likely be reported in quote, unquote, “an unbiased and apolitical means.”

The lead determine on this train is Mr. Syed, a pupil journalist who intends to make use of Mr. Reed’s radio station as a medium to advocate his opinions.

HAMZA SYED

Oh, wow.

BRIAN REED

We now have acquired letters instantly, not directly, slash not directly, from Mr. Syed, hooked up.

HAMZA SYED

They hooked up my letters?

BRIAN REED

They’ve.

HAMZA SYED

Oh, boy.

BRIAN REED

It’s the contents of those letters which elevate issues.

We quote a paragraph from the letter addressed to Mr. Aslam.

HAMZA SYED

Oh, no.

BRIAN REED

Yeah.

HAMZA SYED

Oh, no.

[MUSIC]

HAMZA SYED

Mr. Aslam is the brother of two of the educating assistants from early major college.

Brian and I had a bizarre cellphone name with Aslam early on to ask if he’d join us along with his sisters.

He was reluctant to confess it was him we have been chatting with.

He requested suspiciously how he received his quantity for his regulation workplace, regardless that it is simply marketed on-line, after which he hung up on us.

It appeared like all he heard have been the phrases journalist and Trojan Horse, and he shut down.

We determined to observe up with a letter.

Normally, Brian I look over every of different’s emails and letters to potential sources earlier than we ship them, however Aslam had appeared particularly distrustful of reporters.

Shortly after we talked, he truly modified his WhatsApp profile image to a Malcolm X meme about media controlling the minds of the plenty.

So I mentioned to Brian, let me attempt a extra private enchantment with this one.

Let him know there’s somebody with some shared background concerned on this venture.

Brother to brother I believe are the phrases I truly mentioned to Brian.

And so with this one letter, I drafted it alone, sealed it in an envelope, and I dropped it off at Aslam’s workplace.

I by no means heard again, till now.

As Brian learn to me the courtroom discovering that he, and the folks concerned within the earlier case, together with Rizvana Darr and the Birmingham Metropolis Council, had simply been despatched as nicely.

Quoting my letter to ask Aslam.

BRIAN REED

Quote, “I am on a grasp’s program for Investigative Journalism presently.

I graduate this September.

The Trojan horse started as my dissertation venture, and it’s my first try to start out righting wrongs.

I by no means believed within the official narrative concerning the Trojan Horse.

I by no means believed the letter was genuine.

I by no means believed Tahir Alam was masterminding the sinister Islamic plot.

I by no means believed Birmingham Metropolis Council.

I by no means believed Peter Clarke.

I by no means believed Michael Gove.

I by no means believed Rizvana Darr and I by no means believed your sisters wrote these resignation letters.

What I consider is, I’ll change this narrative, inshallah.”

Finish quote.

HAMZA SYED

Oh, boy.

HAMZA SYED

With every, “Oh, boy,” I used to be coming to phrases with each how unhealthy and the way complicated the state of affairs was.

By this level, I knew the TA’s did not need to take part in our story.

I have been attempting to get in contact with all of them kinds of the way, together with by different members of the family, who informed me the TAs did not need this painful chapter dredged up once more.

And the TAs mentioned as a lot on this letter to the tribunal.

Actually, they went additional, saying they’re frightened that being thrust again into the general public eye may put their security in danger one way or the other.

However, as well as, the TAs weren’t making the bewildering argument that they did not need me to have the data from that case, as a result of I used to be too biased in favor of them.

BRIAN REED

We belief the above units out clearly our place because the candidates on this case.

Yours faithfully, Shahnaz Bibi, Yasmin Akthar, Rehena Khanom.

After which they’ve hooked up each your letter to Aslam after which your letter to Rehena as proof.

So–

BRIAN REED

It is one factor, as a reporter, to have a learn on a state of affairs, to have theories.

It is one other to have such an unambiguous take, and to spell it out in writing and ship it round to folks.

Others may do precisely what the TAs have been doing, brandish what Hamza had written to try to discredit our work.

It may trigger folks to mistrust our reporting.

Plus, we hadn’t even requested Rizvana Darr for an interview but.

She’s clearly one of many key folks we have been reporting on, and I used to be hopeful she may discuss to Hamza and me.

However this letter, this was probably Rizvana Darr’s introduction to us, Hamza writing that he by no means believed her.

BRIAN REED

Dude, I want you hadn’t wrote this this manner.

I’ve received to be trustworthy.

HAMZA SYED

Yeah, I do know.

I do know.

I do not even know what to do now.

I am genuinely, genuinely so sorry for writing that, mate.

Clearly I used to be simply attempting to —

I used to be going too sturdy simply to get him on our aspect, you recognize?

It wasn’t what I believed can be, like, being handed round.

I believed, OK, we’re not going to have the ability to win him with something type of half-assed.

You may as nicely simply type of go all in.

BRIAN REED

Hear, I perceive why you wrote this.

And that is new for you.

I get it.

It is your first story.

HAMZA SYED

I am sorry, man.

I am simply — I do not–

I fucked up, mate.

I fucked up.

I am sorry.

BRIAN REED

No, I am not attempting to — dude, I am not —

I am not attempting to disgrace you into an apology.

Don’t be concerned about that.

However, I simply — like, it is not a entrance.

I need to be clear, I am open to any risk of the reality right here.

HAMZA SYED

I am the identical means.

Identical right here.

Identical right here.

BRIAN REED

And I believe you might be too.

Like, I do not — I learn this, and it would not really feel correct to how you are feeling.

It isn’t simply that we have now our — as a journalist, we have now our opinions however do not say them, I actually attempt to actually be open whereas letting info lead me in the direction of conclusions.

It isn’t like I’ve some conclusion after which simply do not say it.

You already know?

I am not attempting to lecture you, I am simply attempting to speak it out.

That is all.

Are you there?

HAMZA SYED

Yeah, I am simply —

I’ve, you recognize — I’ve killed it.

Oh, man, are you able to simply — are you able to simply name me again in 5 minutes or one thing?

I type of simply have to, simply —

I simply have to go drink some water or one thing.

[PHONE RINGING]

Yo.

BRIAN REED

Hey, I am sorry.

I did not imply to —

I really feel like I used to be lecturing you there.

I did not imply for it to return off that means.

I am actually sorry.

HAMZA SYED

No, that is proper.

Hear, you bought nothing to apologize for on this state of affairs.

I’ve fucked us each up.

It is my fault. And you recognize, you are being surprisingly affected person with me, if I am trustworthy.

If I used to be — belief me, I might not be this diplomatic with you if that was you who’d performed that.

Man, no matter, I will personal these phrases.

I’ll personal these phrases, you recognize?

BRIAN REED

What do you imply personal them?

Do you consider them?

Like, are they true?

HAMZA SYED

Properly, OK, here is —

let me simply be Frank right here, OK?

What’s that checklist once more?

Who am I saying that I do not consider?

BRIAN REED

You by no means believed within the official narrative concerning the Trojan Horse.

That appears honest.

HAMZA SYED

Which I do not.

BRIAN REED

That is nice.

HAMZA SYED

Yeah.

BRIAN REED

I by no means believed the letter was genuine.

HAMZA SYED

Take that one.

BRIAN REED

You by no means believed Tahir Alam was masterminding the sinister Islamic plot.

HAMZA SYED

I did not.

BRIAN REED

I by no means believed Birmingham Metropolis Council.

HAMZA SYED

I do not.

I nonetheless do not.

BRIAN REED

I by no means believed Peter Clarke.

HAMZA SYED

I do not.

BRIAN REED

I by no means believed Michael Gove.

HAMZA SYED

I do not.

BRIAN REED

I by no means believed Rizvana Darr.

HAMZA SYED

I do not.

I really feel like what you’ve gotten there’s, like, the truth of only a human being.

You’ve gotten my mindset as an individual of what I believed this incident was, and you’ve got my strategy as a journalist of the best way I am pursuing it.

As a journalist, as I start with, like, a hunch, like an intuition, based mostly on issues that I’ve researched —

BRIAN REED

Mm-hmm.

HAMZA SYED

That does not imply that when info recommend in any other case I stay cussed and I simply follow my authentic premise.

There is a purpose this story is not broadcast but.

BRIAN REED

I perceive what you are saying, nevertheless it additionally —

the wording is I by no means believed, you recognize?

HAMZA SYED

Yeah, by no means is a powerful phrase, I do know.

I’m not defending my language, nor the truth that I wrote that, or something alongside that traces.

It simply poisons every part.

It poisons every part.

As a result of now it is not within the arms of neutral journalists, now it is within the arms of, like, a biased mob.

God, I simply want we would —

ah, God.

Oh, mate.

BRIAN REED

I would labored with Hamza lengthy sufficient to know that what he was telling me was true.

Certain, he had suspicions, however he was working arduous to uncover info and following the info the place they led.

I used to be pissed off that he’d written this breathless letter that did not correctly seize the work I knew we have been doing.

However what I understand now, listening again to this name, with all my sorry man’s and my discomfort, is that I used to be in the midst of a change, in how I perceive my work.

There was a means I would gone about my job for years that I would begun to doubt with out actually admitting it to myself.

[MUSIC]

This variation crystallized for me after our subsequent leg of reporting, once we teased aside the federal government’s investigations into Birmingham colleges.

We dove into these investigations and the reviews they produced, as a result of for a 12 months and a half Hamza and I had been listening to that there wasn’t any worth in specializing in the Trojan Horse letter, on its supply or its goal.

The letter, folks would say, no matter its unknowns or factual errors, did not matter anymore, as a result of the entire subsequent investigations had discovered that one thing troubling was taking place in Birmingham colleges.

The most damning investigation was additionally essentially the most outstanding one.

Performed on behalf of the Nationwide Division for Schooling, by the previous head of counterterrorism at Scotland Yard, Peter Clarke.

And as soon as we delved into Peter Clarke’s report, that is when it actually set in for me, what Hamza is up towards, as a journalist overlaying this story and as an individual.

From Serial Productions and The New York Instances, I am Brian Reed.

HAMZA SYED

And I am a ache within the ass.

BRIAN REED

That is The Trojan Horse Affair.

[MUSIC]

HAMZA SYED

All proper.

Peter Clarke.

As I would made inconveniently clear in my letter to Aslam, which now filed away within the Midlands West Employment Tribunal, I used to be skeptical of Clarke, however I wasn’t alone in that.

ARCHIVED RECORDING

The determination by the Division of Schooling to nominate the previous head of counterterrorism was described as desperately unlucky by the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police.

It is a concern that the selection of this former terrorism official to research —

HAMZA SYED

Secretary of State for Schooling, Michael Gove, was the one who selected Peter Clarke to run the Trojan Horse investigation.

And other people began grousing the second Gove appointed him.

The points in Birmingham colleges appeared to be about college procedures, curriculum, hiring, non secular apply.

Clarke was identified for executing excessive profile terror stings.

Why would you want somebody with that background for this investigation?

ARCHIVED RECORDING (MICHAEL GOVE)

— counter-terrorism, we’re coping with allegations right here, we’re not coping with al-Qaeda, who’ve had quite a few…

HAMZA SYED

However Gove despatched Peter Clarke to Birmingham anyway.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (MICHAEL GOVE)

If folks have been unfairly alleged to have taken half in actions of which they’re solely harmless, then there may be no more practical determine to exonerate them of these expenses than Peter Clarke.

HAMZA SYED

For 3 months, Clarke posted up in my metropolis.

He and a workforce of D of E officers carried out 43 interviews, many on situation of anonymity, with workers linked to colleges in East Birmingham and others.

And on the finish of it, he revealed his report.

His conclusion was this, that there had been, quote, “coordinated, deliberate, and sustained motion carried out by quite a few related people to introduce an illiberal and aggressive Islamic ethos into just a few colleges in Birmingham,” and that these folks in positions of affect, quote,

“espouse, endorse, or fail to problem extremist views.”

Clarke writes that he carried out his investigation in an environment the place there was a substantial amount of rumor, hypothesis, and unevidenced assertion.

And so, quote, “I’ve handled your complete investigation as an train the truth is discovering and establishing a sound, verifiable, and every time attainable, absolutely corroborated proof base.”

After I learn Peter Clarke’s report for the primary time, although, I used to be not seeing a totally corroborated proof base.

Removed from it.

As an illustration, let’s take a look at Park View College, to which Clarke devotes quite a lot of consideration in his report.

In a single chapter, he features a bullet level checklist of allegations about Park View.

And on the very prime of the checklist, the primary merchandise.

ARCHIVED RECORDING

Peter Clarke speaks a few terrorist video within the college.

Terrorist video within the college.

HAMZA SYED

That is Tahir Alam, Park View’s former chair of Governors.

After we requested him about Peter Clarke’s investigation, he remembered this video factor instantly.

It is certainly one of Clarke’s most incendiary findings from any college.

Quote, “IT technicians recording what gave the impression to be al-Qaeda terrorist movies right into a DVD format.”

ARCHIVED RECORDING

Now, what impression do you get from that?

In a faculty, ought to there be terrorist movies?

The reply isn’t any.

So the college’s performed one thing flawed, have not they?

Now, what data did Peter Clarke have from the folks within the college?

That individual video was introduced in by any individual who was working for the police.

HAMZA SYED

In line with Tahir, somebody doing an anti-crime program for the cops had observed that the college had a DVD burner and requested if they might use it.

And the video they have been copying —

ARCHIVED RECORDING

The terrorist video occurs to be a Panorama program.

HAMZA SYED

You already know that present.

ARCHIVED RECORDING

It was no terrorist video, it was a documentary performed by the BBC Panorama program about, perhaps, Afghanistan.

HAMZA SYED

Tahir says Park View shared this clarification with Peter Clarke and his investigation workforce.

Actually, they shared quite a lot of mitigating and controverting proof for the claims folks have been levying towards them.

But Peter Clarke consists of little reference to that data within the report, past one line saying, quote, “It is just honest to level out that Park View had disputed most, if not all, of the allegations.”

At this time, when you go on the federal government’s web site, you will see the terrorist video nonetheless leads the checklist of claims about Park View, regardless that the Division of Schooling later wrote an inner memo that we have seen, admitting they will discover no proof to again it up.

[MUSIC]

I needed to judge the opposite claims in Peter Clarke’s report.

I knew {that a} 12 months or so after a report got here out most of the allegations had been interrogated, in public hearings, at what was often called the Nationwide Faculty for Instructing and Management, when the federal government tried to ban quite a few the Park View workers from the educating career.

Throughout these hearings, Park View leaders and their attorneys had the chance to place ahead their aspect of the story and cross-examine, not Peter Clarke himself, who did not testify within the listening to, and in addition declined to talk to us,

however the DFE officers who investigated Park View with him and Clarke sources from inside the college.

So I received the transcript of the listening to towards Park View senior management workforce.

It was hundreds of pages and took a complete summer time to slog by.

I’ll take the following 2,000 hours to stroll you thru every allegation.

I am kidding, kind of.

I’m going to take you thru a bunch of the Clarke allegations, ones the federal government centered on of their case towards the academics, as a result of it is the one means, I can consider, to completely convey the sinkholes in Clarke’s investigation, and why I do not suppose anybody

ought to be basing their understanding of The Trojan Horse Affair on this report.

Quite a lot of the claims in Clarke’s report we have mentioned already as a part of our interview with Sue and Steve Packer.

Peter Clarke reviews on the intercourse training class, the tennis lesson, the dearth of promotion and alternative for ladies, however there are much more.

For one, Clarke writes that Park View pupil prefects, our model of corridor screens, have been skilled, in keeping with some workers, to function as morality police, that they would offer the headteacher with the names of pupils who, say, had a boyfriend or a girlfriend,

or if a lady who wasn’t sufficiently coated.

On the disciplinary listening to a 12 months later, the federal government was unable to place ahead any pupil who remembers this.

They really put ahead no college students to testify towards the college in any respect.

The testimony the federal government did present to assist this declare was from one Park View trainer who mentioned on the stand that she believed pupil prrefects have been monitoring the college as non secular police, as a result of she noticed children in detention and did not know why they have been there.

And one other trainer informed her, it was as a result of they have been in a relationship.

The college denied that was the explanation college students have been being detentioned, however regardless, this trainer would not clarify how she received the concept that it was pupil prefects who had snitched on their classmates.

In the meantime, quite a few different academics testified that they by no means heard about prefects performing as a morality squad.

And a former prefect took to the stand to say, they weren’t requested to do something like that.

There’s so much within the Clarke report concerning the assemblies of Park View college being anti-American, or anti-Christian, or anti-Israeli, with indoctrination of scholars occurring.

However on the listening to, from what I gathered studying the transcript, and this was confirmed by a lawyer concerned with the case, a lot of the workers who made claims concerning the nature of assemblies admitted they’d by no means been to an meeting on the college.

Sue Packer was one.

Sue testified the college assemblies have been solely ever led by males.

And when confronted by a lawyer with the names of ladies on workers who’d hosted assemblies in school, Sue mentioned her assertion about it solely being males was based mostly on her, quote, “perception that that was the case.”

One trainer who testified had attended assemblies.

He mentioned throughout certainly one of them Park Views performing head trainer, Maz Hussain, informed youngsters that, quote, “the reply to every part is iqra”” which he discovered regarding as a result of, whereas iqra does imply learn, or in search of data, in Arabic, it is a non secular time period from the Koran.

And this trainer felt uncomfortable with that.

He additionally testified that he did not agree that iqra is the reply to every part.

Peter Clarke wrote that some East Birmingham colleges had, for non secular causes, prevented college students from listening to musical devices and from singing.

On the disciplinary listening to, a DFE investigator admitted that he hadn’t checked inside the cabinet in Park View’s music room, the place the music trainer says the devices have been stored.

College workers spoke of Park View college students singing at assemblies, of kids being on stage with Roger Waters, the bassist of Pink Floyd.

Clarke additionally writes that he discovered monetary mismanagement at Park View college.

One in all his fellow investigators from the DFE said on the listening to that they discovered no such factor.

BRIAN REED

That is the issue with the Clarke report.

He offers no clear sourcing or verification for the overwhelming majority of his allegations.

There are scant info, or figures, or footnotes, or context, which isn’t, by the best way, Peter Clarke’s regular type.

After The Trojan Horse Affair, he went on to grow to be England’s jail inspector.

And within the reviews he produced for that job, he is far more clear about his work and the way his findings are corroborated.

The jail reviews are annotated, filled with statistics, whereas in his Trojan Horse report, you type of should take his phrase for it.

Even claims that have been based mostly on one thing that did happen, there was typically extra to the story than what Clarke reported.

For instance, Clarke writes that there have been makes an attempt to cease Christmas celebrations at Park View.

It is true that to Tahir Alam and others believed that some mother and father would object to their children taking part in sure Christmas actions, comparable to taking part in a Christian determine in a nativity play.

The pupil physique was round 97% Muslim.

However what’s lacking from Clarke’s report is that the college did put up Christmas bushes, held a Christmas meeting, the place a pastor spoke concerning the vacation, organized a Christmas music live performance.

On the listening to, Steve Packer, who appeared most involved about Christmas, testified that every one this was true, although he mentioned there weren’t Christmas songs sung on the Christmas live performance.

Clarke additionally writes that Park View didn’t have a process for vetting exterior audio system invited to the college, which management acknowledged.

Peter Clarke returned a number of occasions to this one imam who visited from Australia, who even though the Australian authorities has referred to as him a extensively revered Islamic determine within the nation, and a moderating affect on Muslim youth, Clarke says has a historical past of extolling extremist views.

The imam’s title is Sheik Shady Al-Suleiman.

And the precise quote Clarke references, from an outdated sermon of Sheikh Shady’s, was truly learn into the document of the Home of Commons by Michael Gove.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (MICHAEL GOVE)

The college invited the preacher, Sheikh Shady Al-Suleiman to talk, even though he’s reported to have mentioned, “Give victory to Muslims in Afghanistan, give victory to all of the mujahideen all around the world.

Oh, Allah, put together us for the jihad.”

HAMZA SYED

I do know Gove was reciting these phrases from Sheik Shady’s outdated sermon as in the event that they’re scary, however no less than, from my expertise, that is a fairly generic sounding log out for Friday prayers.

And we have learn a prolonged file the house workplace ready about Sheikh Shady after Peter Clarke’s investigation, through which officers agree.

They write, quote, “This rhetoric is prone to be heard from imams and mosques across the UK and abroad, after they make particular prayers for folks affected by wars and different calamities.”

These phrases are, quote, “utilized in a really Frequent Prayer uttered by Muslims all over the place.”

[MUSIC]

Peter Clarke’s overarching allegation, the massive cost that every one these are the claims fed into, was that there was an excessive amount of Islamic affect at Park View and different colleges, that they’d grow to be religion colleges, as he places it, in all however title.

Nevertheless it’s completely unclear from Clarke’s report what requirements or benchmarks are used to make that evaluation.

The Division of Schooling offers fairly clear course as to how colleges ought to incorporate non secular training and collective worship, none of which is referenced within the Clarke report.

And that could be due to a surprising revelation made throughout the listening to.

Clarke’s lead academic advisor, the individual from the Division of Schooling who is meant to lend experience about college regulation and administration to the inquiry, admitted beneath cross-examination that she had by no means learn nor supplied Peter Clarke any of her personal division’s steerage

on non secular lodging in British colleges.

If she had, Clarke may need needed to clarify in his report how Park View had run afoul of the requirement.

The college ought to, quote, “Intention to supply the chance for pupils to worship God, to think about religious and ethical points, and to discover their very own beliefs.”

As a substitute, Clarke’s argument that there is undue Islamic affect within the colleges, or Islamic affect of the flawed type, is untethered to the statutory pointers, a broad, free floating, subjective critique.

It is mainly an opinion that there is an excessive amount of Islam.

BRIAN REED

Peter Clarke marshalls this menagerie of allegations, some true, some type of true, some that turned out to not be true, to put out a wider story about East Birmingham colleges, a story which he interweaves by the allegations that I would summarize one thing like this.

A variety of these colleges have been doing fairly nicely, till a bunch of Muslim governors got here in and began agitating for modifications in step with an excessive Islamic worldview.

Their strategies and motives have been improper.

They began taking management at a bunch of colleges.

And since the complaints and outcomes repeat from college to high school, meaning these aren’t remoted incidents, they’re linked.

The college on the epicenter of all this Islamization is Park View.

The individual on the epicenter of Park View is Tahir Alam.

Tahir, he is the principle villain in Clarke’s report, which isn’t my phrase, by the best way.

As officers with the DFEs Counter-Extremism unit have been working with Peter Clarke to place the ending touches on his report, certainly one of them despatched an e mail we have seen which refers to Tahir, and three different Muslim males who labored with them as governors, as their, quote, “most important villains.”

TAHIR ALAM

You will note Clarke revealed a spider diagram on me.

OK?

BRIAN REED

We even have that printed out.

We needed to indicate it to you and get your tackle it.

TAHIR ALAM

Yeah, I do not deny any of it.

BRIAN REED

After the checklist with the terrorist video, flip the web page and you may see a tiny 90s clip artwork picture of a person, who seems white, by the best way, labeled Tahir Alam.

There are traces emanating from him in all instructions, like an online, crisscrossing and connecting between Tahir and icons of colleges, and workplace buildings, and different White trying clip artwork educators with Pakistani names, all people and organizations that Tahir was related to.

TAHIR ALAM

That is painted as some type of community, however these are issues that I am very pleased with.

It says right here, for instance, he labored for Birmingham Metropolis council as a governor coach.

Wow.

He is a vice chair of the Affiliation of Muslim colleges.

How unhealthy is that?

And Birmingham governor’s community affiliate.

I used to be a member of the Birmingham governor’s community for a few years, contributing to enhancing governance throughout the town.

So clearly, that is not, perhaps, good both.

Let’s undergo it.

There’s only some extra left.

BRIAN REED

Various, however Tahir insisted on ending them.

He was a member of the native multi-faith group, SACRE.

He’d been the chair of training for the Muslim Council of Britain, a giant nationwide group.

He was a trustee on the Birmingham Central Mosque.

TAHIR ALAM

So Peter Clarke, along with his tons of expertise as a terror professional, you recognize, looking extremists and terrorists down across the nation, he is produced this.

BRIAN REED

It is mainly your CV.

TAHIR ALAM

It’s taken from my CV.

BRIAN REED

It is attainable.

Tahir had supplied his resume in an utility to the DFE some years earlier than, which had this data on it.

TAHIR ALAM

I submitted all of this.

They made it right into a spider diagram, utilizing it towards me.

BRIAN REED

It is superb whenever you take all of the issues that may, in a CV, be organized like a resume, and prepare them in a spider diagram —

TAHIR ALAM

It offers a unique impression.

BRIAN REED

–in a authorities report by a police officer, by a counterterror official.

TAHIR ALAM

Yeah.

BRIAN REED

It simply has a complete totally different vibe.

TAHIR ALAM

Yeah, that is proper.

Yeah.

That is proper.

It is being crafted to offer a sure picture.

And the spider diagram is meant to offer an impression, as if I am some type of felony who has infiltrated all these totally different organizations.

That is alleged to serve the thought of the Trojan Horse.

[MUSIC]

That is giving a actuality to the Trojan Horse.

BRIAN REED

There is a crucial reality about Tahir in Park View that Peter Clarke disregarded of his report, a incontrovertible fact that, if he had included it, may have completely undercut his complete narrative.

Park View and Tahir Alam have been taking on different East Birmingham colleges, as a result of they have been requested to by the Division for Schooling.

Park View was thought of this big success, and there have been two different colleges close by that basically wanted assist.

And so the entire takeover was approved and set in movement by the DFE by a program that Michael Gove himself was championing, The Academies Program.

Amazingly, Peter Clarke by no means explains this.

So you would be forgiven when you got here away from studying his report with the concept that Muslim governors have been making these strikes illegitimately, when you thought they have been scheming beneath the radar.

Omissions like this, together with all of the allegations printed with out context or rebuttal, the spider diagrams, all of it contributes to a powerful impression that Peter Clarke did uncover a plot in Birmingham.

However whenever you learn the report intently, that is one other confounding factor about it, Clarke by no means truly says whether or not he discovered a plot or not.

He does write, quote, “The key query is whether or not what has occurred has been an organized plot, as described within the Trojan Horse letter.”

However then he by no means explicitly solutions that query sure or no.

This obfuscation, which is on the very coronary heart of the report’s findings, led to a telling second as Peter Clarke was testifying within the Home of Commons about The Trojan Horse Affair, when a member of parliament mentioned to him.

ARCHIVED RECORDING

Can I simply ask Mr. Clarke first, in relation to a number of the proof that you just produced to display that there was a plot, and specifically —

BRIAN REED

Apparently, this MP learn the report and took away from it, plot.

Clarke needed to appropriate him, tells him, I have never truly mentioned that.

I have never mentioned I discovered a plot.

ARCHIVED RECORDING

— the coordinated, concerted motion.

Sure, plot, to me, means one thing barely totally different —

BRIAN REED

The MP pauses for a second, then asks.

ARCHIVED RECORDING

How is that of curiosity?

How is that totally different from concerted motion?

Properly, you’ll be able to have a continuum.

At one finish, there’s quite a lot of spontaneous issues simply occur, on the different finish you’ve got received a bunch of individuals, maybe in a darkened room, sitting round a candle, deciding to do one thing in a really furtive means.

Someplace between them, you will have folks, as I consider we have now right here, who, with a standard mindset, widespread goals, identified to one another, labored in the identical organizations, had labored in the identical career, have shared the goals

and set about attaining these goals utilizing a set of techniques that are remarkably related each time they emerge, and remarkably related because it occurs —

BRIAN REED

Peter Clarke’s report, relatively than clarifying that the Trojan Horse letter was a faux, the plot unevidenced, spun an online of legitimacy round each.

HAMZA SYED

To take my cue from Peter Clarke, I need to share some issues I’ve about some folks with a standard mindset who know one another, have labored in the identical organizations, had widespread goals, and set about attaining these goals.

Two individuals who match that description are Peter Clarke and the person who appointed him, former Schooling Secretary Michael Gove.

These two have identified one another for a few years, primarily by Peter Clarke’s affiliations with suppose tanks that Michael Gove helped set up, which may type their very own spider diagram, actually.

These suppose tanks, and the politicians, and journalists, and officers who’re a part of them, have lengthy advocated a view that in the end made its means into the conservative authorities’s coverage agenda, that with the intention to stop terrorism, authorities have to focus on so-called non-violent extremists.

Michael Gove has been pushing the technique for years.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (MICHAEL GOVE)

Up to now, there was an try to say that the one means through which we may take care of this drawback is that if we handled extremism when it turned violent, and we waited too late.

And I believe–

HAMZA SYED

He argues that there is a pre-violent stage to extremism, throughout which Muslims get drawn into the ideology of Islamism.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (MICHAEL GOVE)

Islamism is a totalitarian view, like communism, like fascism.

And in that respect, the one means through which one can perceive the motivation is when you take a look at the totalitarian roots of the ideology relatively than merely considering that al-Qaeda are a nationwide liberation motion like different terrorist organizations.

You talked about the IRA —

HAMZA SYED

The problem with that is, what many individuals see as early indicators of extremism, the markers of pre-violence, may be arduous to differentiate from the weather of every day life for a lot of Muslims.

Deciding to attend mosque extra ceaselessly, dressing historically, rising a beard, associating with sure Muslim teams, just like the Muslim council of Britain, and having a worldview through which our faith and political opinion are intermingled.

As an illustration, figuring out with Muslims all over the world who’re being victimized, criticizing Western powers for oppression overseas, or sporting a niqab, which Michael Gove in his guide “Celsius 77” characterizes as, quote, “Not a lot a mark of Islamic religion

as a badge of allegiance in the direction of Islamist politics.

It marks the wearer aside as one who has grow to be an inner exile.”

Barely extra poetic, I suppose, than our present prime minister who referred to as ladies who cowl their faces letterboxes and financial institution robbers.

Basically, the idea of pre-violence places all Muslims on a spectrum through which we’re all able to sliding in the direction of violence, and so all of us must be stored beneath surveillance.

[MUSIC]

This conveyor belt idea of radicalization has been fairly roundly debunked.

Teachers, and MI5, and the US Division of Protection, and former CIA brokers, have all identified that there is not any empirical proof to assist it.

Specialists who examine radicalization have not discovered a single discernible pathway to terrorism and warned that attempting to pin down some kind of sample or ideology may be counterproductive, as a result of it is not confirmed to work, and it will probably make folks really feel criminalized and alienated in their very own international locations.

Nonetheless, most of the individuals who formed counterterror coverage have held on to this idea.

Gove, Clarke, the prime minister on the time, David Cameron, future Prime Minister Theresa Might, folks within the US, too.

By the point the Trojan Horse had got here spherical, Michael Gove had spent years, and quite a lot of political foreign money, investing on this worldview,.

For those who learn the Clarke report with a idea of pre-violence in thoughts, abruptly it makes much more sense, particularly when you think about essentially the most damning proof within the Clarke report, his smoking gun.

That is subsequent.

HAMZA SYED

It was a bunch chat.

That was Peter Clarke’s smoking gun.

We have talked about it earlier than, it was a men-only WhatsApp group {that a} bunch of Park View staffers have been a part of referred to as The Park View Brotherhood.

Any person gave Clarke a transcript of some 3,200 messages from the chat, a 12 months’s price, and he devotes a complete chapter to them, as a result of, he says, “The messages are proof of the Muslim educator’s collective mindset.”

In line with Clarke, a lot of the messages have been mundane, about college occasions, job postings, concepts for assemblies, however amongst them have been texts that he noticed as proof of the ideology

these males ascribe to, what Clarke referred to as, “An illiberal and politicized type of excessive social conservatism that claims to symbolize, and in the end seeks to regulate, all Muslims.”

The messages he discovered regarding included an article about pro-european bias within the educating of world historical past, a debate concerning the professionals and cons of educating girls and boys individually, criticism of the British army, a picture of the Israeli flag on a roll of bathroom paper,

skepticism and theorizing about media reporting on terrorist assaults, and a dialogue about probably having college students write letters to the federal government to protest a far proper Islamophobic group as a part of their citizenship classes.

Alongside these, Clarke flagged a number of actually offensive messages, which, when you observe the Trojan Horse inquiries on the time, you in all probability keep in mind listening to about within the headlines.

These are primarily from one trainer, whom we have interviewed for this collection, Razwan Faraz In a single change, Razwan makes a remark about ladies belonging within the kitchen, serving males.

In one other, responding to an article about homosexual marriage and mentioned, “These animals are going out full pressure.”

One other time, a trainer posted a hyperlink a few shrine in Pakistan getting used as a gathering place for homosexual males.

A number of academics within the chat registered their disapproval, together with Razwan who wrote, quote, “The drawback of homosexuality is rife in Pakistan.”

These messages are misogynistic and homophobic, and clearly troubling coming from a trainer.

Clarke’s report makes point out of workers for some colleges who reported that they needed to conceal their sexuality.

If true, that is terrible, clearly.

After we requested Razwan concerning the messages, he informed us the kitchen remark was a joke, and that he has since modified his views on homosexuality and grow to be an advocate for homosexual and transgender rights.

However after Clarke revealed Razwan feedback, a decide discovered that they went past protected non secular beliefs and amounted to a breach {of professional} requirements.

[MUSIC]

Whether or not and the right way to speak about sexuality and gender in British colleges remains to be an energetic controversy.

In 2019, a progressive new intercourse ed curriculum debuted at a major college in East Birmingham, and fogeys misplaced their minds, protesting in giant numbers.

Their opposition included some ugly, homophobic arguments.

Some mother and father even pulled their children out of colleges.

This is not stunning, or no less than it should not be.

Many Muslims who adhere to conservative non secular interpretation, Tahir Alam amongst them, aren’t accepting of LGBTQ folks.

The identical is true of religious Christians within the UK.

Solely 40% of them assist homosexual marriage.

I am not saying homophobia or sexism would not matter, as a result of we’re not the one ones.

I am saying, it does matter, as a result of we’re not the one ones.

These issues require good-faith engagement from leaders.

And but, relatively than grapple with the essential points at hand, here is what our authorities did in response to those WhatsApp messages and the Clarke report.

ARCHIVED RECORDING

Different information now, the federal government is to quick observe a troublesome, new crackdown on extremism.

It is a observe as much as guarantees made within the aftermath of The Trojan Horse Affair in Birmingham, and the jailing of extremists comparable to —

HAMZA SYED

As soon as Peter Clarke’s report was introduced to parliament by the Division for Schooling, politicians set about utilizing it to make sweeping modifications to fight pre-violent extremism, which might have implications far past Alum Rock..

ARCHIVED RECORDING

Though, as we reported on the time, no proof of radicalization was ever discovered, no proof of violent extremism was ever discovered, there was no organized plot, however that is concerning the potential for issues sooner or later.

So the —

In a speech in Birmingham as we speak, the prime minister in contrast the specter of extremist Islam to that of Hitler, communism and the IRA.

And prior to now, he says–

HAMZA SYED

In 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron stood in entrance of a Birmingham College and invoked The Trojan Horse Affair to put out the rationale for a strong reimagining of the nation’s counter-extremism technique.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (DAVID CAMERON)

We undertook a direct evaluation when it turned obvious that extremists had taken over a few of our colleges within the so-called Trojan Horse scandal right here in Birmingham.

However I’ve to be trustworthy right here, one 12 months on, though we’re making progress, it is not fast sufficient.

HAMZA SYED

The suppose tanks made hay of it.

The dwelling secretary on the time, Theresa Might, made her personal journey to Birmingham to ship a Trojan Horse-inspired speech by extremism.

Even the queen received on board, on the request of the Tories, in her personal curt means.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (QUEEN ELIZABETH II)

Measures can even be introduced ahead to advertise social cohesion and shield folks by tackling extremism.

HAMZA SYED

This all culminated within the authorities increasing their counter-extremism coverage, it is referred to as Forestall, in a means that we’re nonetheless dwelling with it as we speak.

Citing The Trojan Horse Affair, the federal government mandated that public workers would now be obligated to be looking out for folks exhibiting the early markers of extremism, or different conduct they discover suspicious.

Which suggests, now in Britain, residents are informing on one another to the state, based mostly on their very own judgment about whether or not an motion or remark is extremist.

Medical doctors are informing on their sufferers, staff on their colleagues, academics on their college students.

And the 12 months since The Trojan Horse Affair, we have had an 11-year-old referred to the Forestall program, as a result of in response to a query at school about what he would do if he got here into some huge cash, mentioned he would give alms to the oppressed, A-L-M-S,

which has misheard as arms to the oppressed.

And a four-year-old was referred for drawing an illustration of his father with a cooker bomb that was later understood to be a cucumber.

We will chortle in any respect this, besides inaccurate reviews like these can simply observe children all the best way into maturity, that they have been flagged to Forestall.

They continue to be folks of curiosity.

And these are simply the loopy incidents that made the information.

The program has been discovered by quite a few lecturers and human rights teams to be discriminatory towards us.

We’re referred in vastly disproportionate numbers.

Because the director of a corporation that screens this system put it not way back, Forestall injects suspicion and discrimination deep into the creativeness of frontline staff, to the detriment of Muslims.

[MUSIC]

BRIAN REED

We requested Peter Clarke, Michael Gove, and the Division for Schooling if they might clarify a number of the flaws we have seen in Peter Clarke’s report.

In return, the DFE despatched us an announcement saying, “The Trojan horse investigation, led by Peter Clarke, rightly centered on whether or not the occasions and behaviors alleged truly occurred, and the findings have subsequently been confirmed by quite a few unbiased reviews,” finish quote.

Only for a minute, a phrase about these different unbiased reviews.

One the DFE talked about, by the Schooling Funding Company, was not unbiased of Clarke’s.

The Schooling Funding Company was a part of the DFE, and a number of the identical individuals who carried out that inquiry have been additionally a part of Peter Clarke’s workforce, even drafted entire chapters of his report.

One other investigation the DFE cited was by Ofsted, the college inspectors who had downgraded Park View from the company’s highest rating to absolutely the lowest.

A downgrade that dramatic is sort of unparalleled.

Ofsted mentioned it was as a result of the college wasn’t doing sufficient to forestall the potential of extremism.

However lots of people, together with outstanding training consultants, claimed Ofsted had succumbed to political strain.

Ofsted’s chief inspector was even dragged in entrance of parliament and grilled about it.

And lastly, the DFE talked about Birmingham Metropolis Council’s Trojan Horse investigation by Ian Kershaw.

Kershaw collaborated intently with Peter Clarke too.

They did joint interviews, shared proof.

And whereas he did decide that some governors had overstepped in pushing for tutorial and non secular modifications at their colleges, in contrast to Clarke, he didn’t allege a sinister ideological risk.

After we interviewed Kershaw, he actually minimized the entire affair, telling us, quote, “One mustn’t overblow the Trojan Horse.

Some folks say scandal, it wasn’t sufficiently big to be a scandal,” finish quote.

One of many suggestions Peter Clarke made on the finish of his investigation was that the Division for Schooling ought to take into account taking motion towards academics who may need breached skilled requirements.

The DFE did.

It restricted or outright suspended greater than a dozen academics, largely from Park View, with the cost that that they had agreed to the inclusion on the college of a, quote, “undue quantity of spiritual affect.”

And the division began holding these disciplinary hearings to find out if the academics ought to be completely banned.

As we talked about, essentially the most outstanding of the instances was towards 5 of Park View’s leaders, individuals who had been head academics, and assistant heads, and the like.

Although not Tahir Alam, as a result of he was a volunteer governor, not a trainer.

He was simply banned outright, and when he appealed, he misplaced.

This listening to, it was the primary time the Park View academics would get an opportunity to attempt to formally clear their names.

Arshad Hussain was certainly one of them.

ARSHAD HUSSAIN

The preliminary set of dates, I believe the hearings have been three months. Ended up occurring for 2 and a half years.

They’re making it up as they go alongside.

BRIAN REED

Throughout this time, Arshad and his colleagues, two of whom, curiously sufficient, aren’t Muslim, which let themselves to a colorless constructing in Coventry, the place the federal government would argue that they weren’t match to work in colleges.

ARSHAD HUSSAIN

You may’t train.

Your hearings are scattered throughout the 2 years, so you’ve got received a day right here, day there.

It was simply horrendous.

HAMZA SYED

By this level, the cost towards Arshad and his colleagues have been watered down considerably from when the Trojan Horse allegations first emerged.

As the federal government’s legal professional mentioned in his opening assertion, “Regardless of what you could have learn or heard, this case isn’t, and I can’t stress this sufficient, this case isn’t about an evil plot to indoctrinate younger youngsters in extremist ideologies or something prefer it.”

He mentioned the Division for Schooling was not suggesting that the educators have been, quote, “malicious or ill-willed.”

It was not suggesting that Park View hadn’t had nice success.

What the federal government was arguing, the legal professional mentioned, was that the academics had didn’t respect range by going, quote, “Too far in inculcating their very own imaginative and prescient of the cultural id they need these youngsters to have.”

An all-White panel sat and listened to all-White attorneys argue about this till the case lastly concluded in Might of 2017, three and a half years after the Trojan Horse letter arrived on Sir Albert Bore’s desk.

This basically marked the top of The Trojan Horse Affair, and the top was its personal magnificent, enraging shambles.

It was the ultimate hour.

The disciplinary panel was drafting its determination, and there had been this backwards and forwards that had been occurring for the reason that starting of the proceedings concerning the transcripts of interviews that Peter Clarke’s workforce had carried out with witnesses from Park View college.

The Park View academics had requested for these transcripts repeatedly.

They’d a proper to see them.

And the entire time, the Division for Schooling’s attorneys had mentioned they did not have them, that they weren’t counting on these interview transcripts to argue their case.

However that wasn’t true.

It emerged on the final minute that the DFE did have them, they usually had used them to mount their case.

The entire time, years, the federal government’s attorneys have been intentionally withholding essential proof from the Park View academics, their authorized groups, and the panel.

The authorities had been sitting on no less than 1,600 pages of paperwork, together with the Clarke transcripts.

When the disciplinary panel discovered this, on the eve of studying its determination, the panelists demanded that the senior solicitor for the federal government’s authorized workforce seem in entrance of them and clarify herself, clarify how she’d let this occur.

However she did not present.

She mentioned she had a associate’s assembly for her regulation agency that she could not miss.

And so the panelists discontinued the case.

They issued no findings.

They have been in a brand new determination which mentioned of the DFE lawyer’s actions, quote, “There was an abuse of the method, which is of such seriousness that it offends the panel’s sense of justice and propriety.

What has occurred has introduced the integrity of the method into disrepute.”

ARSHAD HUSSAIN

I imply, the entire thing is a blur.

BRIAN REED

Arshad Hussain remembers sitting within the listening to room because the panel learn its determination.

ARSHAD HUSSAIN

As they began pushing in that course, the abuse of course of, and listening to goes to be dropped, I began actually getting flashes in entrance of my eyes considering, this has occurred as a result of any individual has withheld proof.

The solicitor had withheld the proof, and she or he could not come to the listening to, as a result of she was on a flight that night, conveniently.

And she or he could not come and reply the questions, whereas we would been answering questions for 2 years.

She simply wasn’t as much as — accessible to reply the questions and clarify why this occurred, you recognize, why she’d performed that.

You’ve got messed how many individuals’s lives up, and also you simply cannot hassle to indicate up.

I do not know, my thoughts, simply —

I do not know, it simply went —

I simply could not deal with it, that any individual had determined to try this, for this period of time, and but I am the one sitting right here simply kind of broke down, I believe.

[MUSIC]

It simply felt like, whenever you step on a beetle on the road, otherwise you step on an insect, and there is not any consequence, there is not any feeling of, oh, what have I performed.

It is simply, yep, that is simply a part of what it’s.

We have trampled on these folks.

Yeah, OK, they’re going to get by it.

Yeah, we have not gained this one, however let’s simply keep it up.

BRIAN REED

Finally, each trainer’s case in The Trojan Horse Affair, aside from one, who was not from Park View, was thrown out due to the federal government’s lawyer’s misconduct, and their unwillingness to share the underlying materials from Peter Clarke’s investigation.

After all of the drama, the headlines, the investigations, the parliamentary hearings, the banning orders, the million plus kilos spent prosecuting academics, the brand new Forestall necessities compelling folks to surveil one another, the commandeering of colleges in East Birmingham

and worsening educational outcomes for college students, that was how The Trojan Horse Affair ended.

It was formally resolution-less.

Park Views academics weren’t banned, however nor have been they vindicated.

HAMZA SYED

So that is what I noticed once we lastly turned to Peter Clarke’s report.

This investigative doc that turned the commonest response by officers to questions concerning the Trojan Horse letter, to not fear about whether or not the letter was a hoax or not, or the place it got here from, as a result of Peter Clarke produced a much more dependable doc.

Properly, it seems that wasn’t true both.

The Clarke report was additionally, in its personal methods, bogus.

After I internalized that conclusion, I skilled a stage of dejection that was arduous for me to grasp.

In any case, that is what I believed to be true after I started the story, that the Trojan horse was a lot ado about nothing.

And but the work of reporting on the Clarke report, a.okay.a.

Britain’s official narrative of the case, was emptying.

Sitting there surrounded by paperwork, I struggled to think about what different group of individuals you could possibly do that to in Britain and get away with it.

Making an attempt to return to phrases with how nugatory folks should suppose we’re, that they’re going to be comfy assembling an official report riddled with errors and mistruths, submitting it to parliament, sharing it with outstanding journalist to jot down articles about, all with no expectation

that folks would not consider them.

Extra, removed from repercussions, quite a few Clarke’s workforce, together with Clarke, have been promoted after the publication of his inquiry into the Trojan horse.

After which there is a course of by which I would arrived at this level, that being journalism, a discipline through which was made completely clear to me when my Aslam letter surfaced.

I am obligated to maintain an open thoughts, to be honest with the likes of Peter Clarke and Michael Gove, to think about their perspective, attempt to perceive the alternatives they made, and even when I’ll come at them critically, to rein in my tone and phrases

so it would not really feel like I am simply out to get them not directly.

It didn’t look like that type of respect was mutual.

BRIAN REED

I’ve at all times identified that reporting this story is a a lot totally different expertise for Hamza than it’s for me.

Ever for the reason that starting, once we burst out of Council Home after our first interview with Albert Bore.

HAMZA SYED

What the fuck was regarding?

Inform me what’s regarding, mate.

BRIAN REED

This turned the topic of an ongoing dialogue between the 2 of us about the way you’re supposed to do that work.

HAMZA SYED

We undergo this step-by-step, type of aspect by aspect, however you might be simply, like, unflappable.

BRIAN REED

Hamza perpetually bewildered as to how I used to be capable of take the issues we have been encountering and studying in stride the best way I do.

HAMZA SYED

I am not going to deceive you, I do take into consideration you generally, and I do marvel the way you’re wired.

BRIAN REED

Actually?

HAMZA SYED

Typically I get up and I believe, I ought to be like that, and that is how I must be to ensure that me to do nicely on this discipline.

BRIAN REED

And me, always struggling to clarify me and my motivation.

HAMZA SYED

What are you doing right here in Birmingham?

BRIAN REED

I do not know.

You are asking me to be introspective in a means that is troublesome.

BRIAN REED

However by the point we have been ready by the Clarke investigation the tenor of our debate had modified.

I observed Hamza turning into more and more bitter about being a journalist, and he began to speak extra about how perhaps this new discipline he’d entered wasn’t proper for him.

One thing concerning the job felt unnatural.

And he informed me he was considering he won’t maintain doing it after this collection got here out, which was dispiriting for me, as a result of positive, Hamza had performed a few issues throughout investigation that appeared to me ill-advised, however he is a very good journalist, dogged, sharp, intuitive, authentic.

He appeared as well-suited as anyone for this job.

However here is what I’ve come to appreciate Hamza and I have been experiencing in a different way, working alongside one another on this story for therefore lengthy, the Trojan Horse.

And I do not imply the Trojan Horse letter, or The Trojan Horse Affair, I imply the thought of the Trojan Horse, this concept which contaminated each facet of the occasions we have been investigating, the concept that Muslims, who’re taking part in civic life within the West,

are, in fact, utilizing Western Democratic methods duplicitously, as a vessel to sneak into societies and international locations that aren’t actually their very own to allow them to subvert them.

That phrase, Trojan Horse, in reference to Muslims, it is not taboo, it is completely acceptable to make use of it within the title of official reviews submitted to parliament, or as Michael Gove did in “Celsius 7/7,” because the title of a chapter in your guide concerning the Muslim risk, or within the title of your podcast.

It is acceptable to make use of it in your marketing campaign for president of america.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (DONALD TRUMP)

This may very well be the nice Trojan Horse of all time, since you take a look at the migration, examine it, take a look at it.

Now they’re going to begin infiltrating with ladies and kids.

BRIAN REED

Donald Trump used the Trojan Horse metaphor to discuss Muslims time and again in his run for president.

It was a part of his stump speech.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (DONALD TRUMP)

Tens of hundreds of Syrian refugees who in all probability, in lots of instances, not in all probability, who’re positively, in lots of instances, ISIS-aligned, and we now have them in our nation.

And wait until you see, that is going to be the nice Trojan Horse.

BRIAN REED

This trope of Muslims as a Trojan Horse, it is a racist lie, one which strikes me as not dissimilar in its efficiency and hazard to, as an illustration, the anti-Semitic lie a few cabal of Jews nefariously controlling Western establishments.

That lie, it is price noting, was additionally proliferated by a hoax doc, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The canard that Muslims are surreptitiously infiltrating Western international locations additionally reveals up in some scary locations, white supremacist literature concerning the so-called substitute idea.

white supremacist terrorists, like Anders Breivik, who killed 77 folks in Norway, or the person who massacred 51 folks at two mosques in New Zealand, they each wrote at size about the specter of Muslims as invaders.

In the previous couple of years, governments all over the world have drawn on these identical bigoted views to justify assaults on Muslims, the Uighurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar the horrible remedy of Muslims in India,

which appears to be getting worse, the US banning immigration from many majority Muslim international locations.

Persons are carrying this trauma round.

Late final 12 months, a comparatively new Muslim member of parliament, Zarah Sultana, gave a heartbreaking speech about what her time in British politics had been like.

ARCHIVED RECORDING (ZARAH SULTANA)

Earlier than being elected, I used to be nervous about being a Muslim lady within the public eye.

Rising up, I had seen the abuse outstanding British Muslims have been topic to.

I knew I would not be in for a straightforward experience.

When younger Muslim ladies requested me what it is like, I would prefer to say there’s nothing to fret about, that they might face the identical challenges as their non-Muslim mates and colleagues, however Madam Chair, in fact, I can not say that, as a result of in my brief time in parliament, that is not my expertise.

So let me learn out just a few examples.

One individual, for instance, wrote to me, and I quote, “Sultana, you and your Muslim mob are an actual hazard to humanity.”

One other wrote, I am a most cancers all over the place I’m going.

And shortly, they mentioned, Europe will vomit you out.

I’ve found that, to be a Muslim lady, to be outspoken, and to be left wing, is to be topic to this barrage of racism and hate, it is to be handled by some as if I have been an enemy of the nation that I used to be born in, as if I do not belong.

Madam Chair, this Islamophobia would not come from a vacuum, it is not pure or ingrained, it is taught from the very prime.

These fires are fanned by folks in positions of energy and privilege.

At this time, our prime minister mocks Muslims as letterboxes, and financial institution robbers, and much from scrapping for lease, earlier this 12 months his authorities introduced who would lead a evaluation of this system, William Shawcross, a person who as soon as mentioned, and I quote,

“Europe and Islam is among the biggest, most terrifying issues of our future.”

Islamophobia may be very actual in Britain as we speak.

[MUSIC]

BRIAN REED

That is what Hamza was going through that I wasn’t.

And fascinated by Hamza’s strategy and reactions to our investigation this manner, his outspokenness, his anger, his urgency, his generally crazed feeling that, it doesn’t matter what we tried in our reporting, it was by no means sufficient, it makes each type of sense.

HAMZA SYED

We now have to cease holding again, mate.

We now have to cease holding again.

BRIAN REED

Yeah.

HAMZA SYED

Each single alternative we have now to go arduous, we pull again, we pull again, we pull again.

So I do not care when you suppose I am impolite.

I do not care when you suppose I am a dickhead.

I would like you to know —

BRIAN REED

And it makes each type of sense why this journalistic course of, which the best way I would discovered it, encourages a indifferent standpoint, offers area for all relative sides to weigh in and provides their views, would, on this occasion, with this story, repulse Hamza.

HAMZA SYED

I am completely sick of this.

Mate, we have at all times been good, we have at all times been good.

BRIAN REED

As a result of what if the dominant perspective in a narrative is one which’s enmeshed with a racism towards you?

HAMZA SYED

In some unspecified time in the future, we have to —

BRIAN REED

I perceive.

I perceive.

I’m with you.

But in addition, keep in mind, we’re in a protracted recreation.

HAMZA SYED

I am not listening, man.

BRIAN REED

Yeah.

HAMZA SYED

I am not listening.

I’ve by no means let myself simply be shat on the best way I’ve for a 12 months and a half, by no means, by no means.

Fucking sit there and take it as a result of I am a journalist?

Fuck that.

Fuck this title.

Critically, I will throw this title within the fucking river if it means I can not simply be myself.

BRIAN REED

Yeah.

BRIAN REED

If I believe again to the explanations I received into journalism, when you requested me again then why I used to be drawn to it, I might have informed you, I like tales, I need to study the craft, I am concerned about folks.

I do mistrust authority, I need to maintain them accountable.

Making a change on the earth would have been in there, however not on the prime of the checklist.

However Hamza has been clear from the get-go about his purpose for moving into this work.

Actually, except for that unlucky paragraph in his letter to Aslam, through which Hamza lists all of the folks he by no means believed, most of what he wrote in that letter quantities to a transferring mission assertion.

“For those who consider journalism is an evil organ, able to inflicting nice harm,” Hamza wrote, “then by default, you consider that very same organ can attain as many individuals to trigger nice change.

That is the idea I’ve determined to dedicate my life to.”

He would pursue this work, he wrote, “as a Muslim at first, and as a journalist second.”

[MUSIC]

HAMZA SYED

Subsequent on The Trojan Horse Affair, officers inform us we have gotten the story all flawed, so flawed they threatened to go to a decide to gag us from speaking to you about it.

And we realized, truly, we did miss one thing.

That is arising in “The Element of the Deputies.”

The Trojan Horse Affair is produced by Brian Reed and me, together with Rebecca Laks.

The present is edited by Sarah Koenig.

Extra modifying by Ira Glass and by contributing editor Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi.

Reality-checking and analysis by Marika Cronnolly and Ben Phelan.

Unique rating by Thomas Mellor with further music by Matt McGinley and Steven Jackson.

Sound design, mixing and music supervision by Steven Jackson and Phil Dmochowski on the Audio Non-visual Firm.

Julie Snyder is our government editor.

Neil Drumming is managing editor.

Supervising producer is Ndeye Thioubou.

Government assistant is Alberto DeLeon.

Sam Dolnick is an assistant managing editor of The New York Instances.

BRIAN REED

Audio was licensed by BBC Movement Gallery, Getty Photos, and Lola Clips ITV Archive.

HAMZA SYED

Particular due to Fahid Qurashi, Faiza Patel, Shawkat Toorawa, Andrew Fake, Frank Langfitt, Clemency Wells, Dan Dolan and Sam Johnston Hawke from Reprieve, Al Ryan, Layla Aitlhadj and Paul Ruest

Some books and articles we’ve discovered actually useful that we need to point out: John Holmwood and Therese O’Toole’s “Countering Extremism in British Faculties,” in addition to “In opposition to White Feminism” by Rafia Zakaria; “The Muslim Drawback: Why We’re Improper About Islam and Why It Issues” by Tawseef Khan; “Michael Gove: A Man in a Hurry,” by Owen Bennett; “It’s Not About The Burqa,” edited by Mariam Khan; Shamim Miah’s “Muslims, Education and Safety: Trojan Horse, Forestall and Racial Politics,” and Samira Shackle’s piece within the Guardian, “Trojan Horse: the actual story behind the faux ‘Islamic plot’ to take over colleges”. Additionally: “British Pakistani Boys, Schooling, and the function of faith – Within the Land of the Trojan Horse” by Karamat Iqbal,James Fergusson’s “Al-Brittannia,” “My Nation; Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent” by Innes Bowen; and “Reduce From the Identical Material,” edited by Sabeena Akhtar.

The Trojan Horse Affair was made by Serial Productions and The New York Instances.