Defence of Britain Hangs on Skyhooks

Trojan Horse debate: We were wrong, all cultures are not equal

For years, we all turned a blind eye to the segregation of Muslim pupils. Now it is time to stand up to propagators of barbarism and ignorance 

We have been following the "Trojan Horse" issue Birmingham where a group of dedicated, consistent Islamic activists have sought to take control of some public schools by means of infiltration, subterfuge, and dissembling, until it is too late.  They regard this attempt as jihad--a manifestation of holy war.  The matter has become exposed, the government has reacted, and for now, it seems, the effort has failed.  We said at the time that this would shake the British establishment, for two reasons.

Firstly, the establishment for years has told itself and everyone else that Britain is a multi-cultural, tolerant nation.  Thou shalt not judge.  Thou shalt not offend.  Thou shalt accept each and all in good faith--etc. etc.  Secondly, the establishment has chosen to adopt the view that underneath all cultures and religions everyone really is a thoroughly good chap.  Therefore, all cultures are benign, positive, and fundamentally humanist in their ideological framework.  

In this view, Islamic schools would basically be schools where teachers and pupils dressed quaintly, but apart from that delightful oddity, would be champions of secular humanism.  

The Trojan Horse project of an attempted Islamic takeover of some public schools has shaken the toleranzistas up a good deal.  But, ideologically the establishment has nowhere to go.  Long ago it threw out the Christian faith in favour of secular rationalistic jibberish.  It's between a rock and a hard place.  It does not want Islamic schools, but the grounds of its opposition are tenuous indeed.  

Allison Pearson, writing in the Telegraph provides us with an example of the confused melee now on display.

Let me quote Myriam Francois-Cerrah, a writer and Muslim convert, who told Channel 4 News on Tuesday that she rejected calls by the Prime Minister and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, for schools to promote British values. “In many ways, the problem is creating a hierarchy of cultures when you say you need to promote British values,” she objected. “What does that say to children in a classroom whose heritage harks from outside the British Isles? It says this country has superior moral values and you are coming from some backward culture whose values you … must not consider equal to our own.”

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what we are saying, Myriam. Spot on! A Muslim girl who winds up in Bolton or Luton should thank her lucky stars she doesn’t live in Sudan – or Pakistan, where, only last month, a woman was stoned to death by her family for the crime of marrying a man of whom they disapproved. Farzana Parveen’s father explained: “I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it.”

Are British values superior to Mr Parveen’s? I do hope so. 

Yes, but here's the rub.  By what standard are British values superior?  Rigorously remove the consideration of the command of God, Thou shalt not kill--as Britain has done, on what basis does one prove conclusively and certainly that Mr Parveen's values are wrong, or evil. 

Ah, yes, we cannot say that--for to speak of evil implies there are ultimate standards by which things are to be judged, which in turn requires, or presupposes a holy eternal, ultimate God.  The best that the establishment can intone is that such things are not British.  But Britain has already committed itself to the ultimacy of multi-culturalism.  It's a bit late now to raise objections.  Despite this, Pearson makes the attempt:

Unfortunately, the great lie underpinning the creed of multiculturalism, as spouted by Francois‑Cerrah and her ilk, is that all cultures are “equally valid”. Well, patently, they’re not. The reason irate Pakistani patriarchs are not chucking bricks at their errant daughters in the Birmingham Bull Ring is because Britain has a basically uncorrupt police force, a robust judiciary and an enlightened, hard-won system of liberal values that regards women and girls as equals, not third-class citizens.

But instead of standing up to barbarism and ignorance, too often we have looked away in embarrassment or fear. How many teachers have averted their gaze when 13-year-old Muslim girls suddenly disappear from the classroom to be taken “home” for a forced marriage, because this would present unwelcome evidence that some cultures are less valid than others?

How many health professionals in Bradford are concerned, but never say so, that intermarriage in the Muslim community – 75 per cent of Pakistanis in the city are married to their first cousin – is causing babies to be born blind, deaf and with other disabilities? Back in 2008, when Labour environment minister Phil Woolas said that British Pakistanis were fuelling the rate of birth defects, he was slapped down by Downing Street, with a spokesman for prime minister Gordon Brown saying the issue was not one for ministers to comment on. Government after government has filed this thorny issue in “The Too Difficult Box”, the title of a timely new book edited by former Cabinet minister Charles Clarke. . . .

Already reactionary forces are emerging.  Since Islamic faith schools appear unacceptable, let's not discriminate against them.  Let's get rid of all faith schools so that we can prove non-discrimination and even-handedness. 

Growing suggestions that all faith schools should be banned because some Muslims cannot be trusted to prepare their children for life in contemporary society are simply outrageous. Why should Catholic, Jewish and Church of England schools, which provide a terrific, disciplined learning environment for millions of children, be forced to cease their good work and shut down? Why must the tolerant be made to carry the can for the intolerable? 

But it's secular humanism that gave us the relativistic framework in the first place--a world-view which preached the equality of all views ancillary to a secularist core, which all men of good will would embrace (unless they were reactionary primitives).   

The crisis in Birmingham made me look up Ray Honeyford. The headmaster of a school in Bradford, Honeyford published an article highly critical of multiculturalism around the same time that I was wondering why Muslim girls in west London weren’t allowed to learn how to swim. Honeyford was damned as a racist and forced to take early retirement, but how prophetic his words seem now. The alarmed headmaster referred to a “growing number of Asians whose aim is to preserve as intact as possible the values of the Indian subcontinent within a framework of British social and political privilege”. Honeyford questioned the wisdom of the local education authority in allowing such practices as the withdrawal of children from school for months at a time, in order to go “home” to Pakistan, on the grounds that this was appropriate to the children’s native culture.

“Those of us working in Asian areas,” he wrote, “are encouraged, officially, to 'celebrate linguistic diversity’ – ie, applaud the rapidly mounting linguistic confusion in these growing number of city schools in which British-born Asian children begin their mastery of English by being taught in Urdu.”

Ray Honeyford died in 2012, so he didn’t live to see the Leeds secondary school where every single pupil, including a handful of white ones, is being taught English as a foreign language. He didn’t need to see it. He knew it would happen, and what the cost would be, and his warnings were shouted down or put away in the Too Difficult Box. 

Pearson's naivete leads her to think that if children are really exposed to British values they will experience a gravitational pull.  What on earth is that, you ask.  Is she suggesting that the human heart is bent instinctively and natively to "British values"?  How parochial.  How quaint.  How Victorian.  How unChristian!  And there lies the rub.  We have arrived at the real problem.  Britain is not God-which doubtless will come as a bit of a shock to some.   It's this kind of thinking which implies that Britain will not win this battle. 

I think the battle we must fight now really has very little to do with sincere religious belief. It’s about social control, repression, misogyny and cruelty. The battle is about Kamaljit, a 14-year-old girl I once taught, who chided me when I read the class a story about snakes in India, like the good, clueless multiculturalist that I was. “Please, Miss, we don’t like that stuff,” she said. “We’re English. We like ice skating.”

We have to expose Muslim children to as wide a range of experiences as possible so they will feel the gravitational pull of British values. . . . But there is another song, and a better one, and children will learn it if they are only given the chance: Belong, belong, belong.

Good luck with that.