In extensive interviews with The Sunday Telegraph, more than a dozen sources disclosed how children at one supposedly non-religious primary school, Oldknow, were led in anti-Christian chanting by one of their teachers at assembly.
The school also conducts weekly Friday prayers, has organised at least three school trips to Mecca subsidised from public funds, and requires all pupils to learn Arabic — almost unheard of at a primary school.
It also runs its own madrassah, or religious school. Oldknow’s highly successful non-Muslim head teacher has been driven from her post for resisting this “Islamising agenda”, this newspaper has learnt.
“Oldknow’s pupils are mostly but not entirely Muslim and it was always an equal-opportunity school,” said one former member of staff. “But then all of a sudden there were Jummah [Friday] prayers, and going to Saudi Arabia on government money, and the Arabic, and blatant belittling of Christianity.”
Hardline teachers were recruited who would “sow the seed of religion in every lesson,” said one source. “Some of the teachers told pupils that music was sinful in Islam and the children started to refuse to do music, even though it is compulsory in the National Curriculum. It is incredibly difficult when your own colleagues undermine your efforts to give the children a balanced education.”
Matters came to a head, three separate sources said, last December when all the normal Christmas activity, including a tree, cards and the pantomime, was cancelled because it was considered un-Islamic, and the school’s Arabic teacher, Asif Khan, delivered an assembly “ridiculing” Christian beliefs. “It was like a rally,” said one person present. “He was leading them in chants of, 'Do we believe in Christmas? No! Do we give out Christmas cards? No! The seven days of Christmas, they [Christians] can’t even count!’
“The children have always enjoyed Christmas and their parents are fine with it too. Five staff complained and Mrs Kondal made him apologise, but the governors were furious with her and that was the end, really.”
The head of another successful primary school, Springfield, received death threats, had his car tyres slashed and is under “non-stop attack” by radical governors, according to parents, other governors and staff at the school. Radical governors and some parents also put pressure on the school to cancel the annual nativity play, but this was fought off after Mr Webb enlisted the local imam in support, staff said. One member of staff was forced to remove a picture of Jesus from an Easter assembly on the grounds that images of a prophet were unacceptable.
At least one of the governors at Springfield, Nasim Awan, an Islamic bookshop owner, is a member of the “Educational Activists” group administered by Razwan Faraz. He boasted in leaked messages about the “battles” he had “fought and won” at a “large inner city primary school” which led to its governing body becoming “polarised on faith grounds”.
As this newspaper disclosed two weeks ago, a senior teacher at Park View praised the al-Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki at assemblies and used school facilities to copy Osama bin Laden DVDs. The senior teacher is a candidate to replace Mrs Clark, who is retiring. On November 28 the school hosted an extremist preacher, Shady al-Suleiman, at one of its Year 10 and 11 assemblies.
