Mick Hartley

The news yesterday that the prayer ban challenge at Katharine Birbalsingh's Michaela Academy is being funded by public money, in the form of some £150,000 of legal aid, may have come as a shock to innocent readers, but is all part of a seeming blindness to Islamic militancy from the establishment. We heard the other day of the counter-terrorism course for civil servants at Kings College, where it was blithely asserted that the threat of Islamic extremism is exaggerated, while the East London primary school where Islamic militants created a storm over the ban on pro-Palestinian badges worn by children may now be forced to close. Indeed the general acceptance of the unfortunate term "Islamophobia" is a mark of how far we've come.

Janice Turner in the Times this morning – Head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh must win against Islamic bullies:

How do you unite 700 children of many faiths and ethnicities in a hardscrabble inner London borough? Even lunch is a minefield. Your very limited canteen could try to follow every religious edict: halal and kosher, no beef or pork, fish on Fridays, no eggs served on the same plates as meat. Or the whole school could go vegetarian.

The latter was the elegant solution of Katharine Birbalsingh, headmistress of the Michaela academy in Wembley, northwest London, and illustrates her secular philosophy. Find a compromise that may not be everyone’s first choice but eliminates religious division and puts the community above the individual. If children want lamb biryani, spicy ribs or burgers they can enjoy them at home. But at school they will break bread as one.

Leaving religion at the school gates has contributed to Michaela’s phenomenal results, since it enshrines the absolute sovereignty of school rules. This in turn has kept at bay the gangs, violence and racial divisions that blight many poorer communities.

So it is astonishing that an Ofsted “outstanding” state school, which sends 82 per cent of pupils to Russell Group universities, is being taken to the High Court on religious grounds by a pupil funded by the taxpayer. Legal aid that could reach £150,000 has been granted to fight the ethos of a secular school, which must find an equivalent sum to defend itself. There should be an immediate inquiry into why £300,000 of public funds better spent on education is underwriting a vexatious, ideological attack. Because let’s have no illusions that this case is purely about a year 9 Muslim girl (known as TTT) who no longer feels “like I properly belong” in Britain because Michaela won’t create a prayer room on its very cramped site. It is a muscle-flex by political Islam.

It began with one child praying at lunchtime on their blazer, because prayer mats aren’t allowed. Other kids joined in until there were around 30, with those who prayed chiding those who didn’t for their weaker faith. The same dynamic was observed by the author Ed Husain while studying at Tower Hamlets College, when Islamic Society members guilt-tripped Muslim girls who didn’t cover their heads, until one by one they adopted the hijab.

In other words, it's straight out of the familiar Islamic playbook: hardliners push their sharia-style demands, assuming – correctly – that other Muslims will be intimidated into support, while the authorities are too scared of "Islamophobia" accusations to offer any principled resistance.

In 2018, St Stephen’s primary in east London banned the hijab, which was being worn by girls as young as four, and children fasting during Ramadan. Although the new rules had the blessing of local imams, the school was bombarded with 500 emails a day, staff were intimidated and the chairman of governors, himself Muslim, had to resign. Last year when an autistic boy brought a Koran into Kettlethorpe high school, west Yorkshire, and accidentally dropped it in the playground, four pupils were suspended and the police involved.

Schools, police and councils alike are cowed both by threats from extremists and accusations of Islamophobia. It is unthinkable that human rights lawyers would seize a case mounted by evangelical Christians to demand a school chapel and playground prayer circles, or that they’d be granted legal aid. The left has remained silent about Michaela, whose high-profile head has worked with Tory governments. In doing so they are empowering what constitutes Islam’s far right: the same ideologues who deny Afghan girls any education at all or demand Iranian women are beaten for exposing their hair.