Actions which are not legally secure will end in scenes of Islamic (or indeed other fundamentalists of any religious persuasion) crowding round outside the High Court having won the case against the government under human rights legislation enacted, and the irony is never lost on them, to produce the kind of tolerant open society clearly at odds with the spirit of their kind of ‘faith’. Were I a Minister I would be thinking twice.

The problem is how does one proscribe such a thing as bias? One might easily be trapped in arguments of equivalence such as dog those surrounding drugs. Tea and coffee are ‘drugs’ to some, and alcohol a worse problem, though I think that absurd. Try however to prove it.

I think that the influence of Hizb ut-Tahrir to be pernicious, their justification duplicitous. It seems to me in the examples I have read and listened to evidence about they seek to divide and set out to erect hostility based upon entirely on faith. Further, their approach objectifies and denigrates those who are without the ‘faith’. On that level it is undesirable at best. But if one does not have powers to intervene then how to counter it? If funding is available to some schools and not others then on what grounds are funds with held? Are these grounds legal ones, if so then they can they be appealed and so on. I think I see more crowds of grinning faces outside the High Court.

It might be argued with profit by Hizb ut-Tahrir that the ethos engendered by this approach – of exclusive faith – bestows on its recipients nothing worse than the ethos which has sustained the English Public Schools system for more than a century. Why is the ‘born to rule’ outlook any better or worse than ‘divinely preordained’?

Also it might be easily pointed out that considered purely as schools faith schools excel in academic measures also; I do not know if that is true but it might be so. If it is not, then why aren’t schools with equally challenged records in academic achievement treated equally? The academic challenge to a school run on extremist lines might be as unrewarding as any other. Are there in fact any other challenges in Law a concerned government might make? I fail to see how such legislation as would remove Hizb ut-Tahrir from managing schools would survive any test of human rights as I understand them. A depressing thought indeed, and one I am certain has occurred to Hizb ut-Tahrir without of course producing a similar reaction.

At present we are constantly shuffling about over national drugs policy and the issue is bedevilled by opinion as well as evidence. Clearly this is a very difficult issue to resolve on grounds of evidence alone. Faith schools are another instance of why I am pleased not to be a politician.

Balls is not playing a straight bat. He says the Foundation has told him “that it no longer has any links with any of the individuals who are alleged to have connections with Hizb ut-Tahrir”.

Immediately after my story appeared, last month, Mrs Hamilton resigned as a trustee of the Foundation – although she may still be “proprietor” of one of its schools. But the Government money was paid around 18 months ago, a time when Mrs Hamilton was still very much in charge.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/6657185/E..

What’s your point? Prevent cash did go to ISF, albeit indirectly for their ’seminars’.

Are you saying, Mike S, that if the Nazi party of Great Britain received funding from the government in a roundabout sort of way instead of in a straightforward, transparent manner…that this wouldn’t then matter a jot?

You can’t be serious…?

“How many seats in our legislature have either the Henry Jackson Society or Labour Friends of Israel sold or bought?”

LFI (propreitor, Michael Levy) exists for little or no purpose except the criminal sale of peerages. It gets New Labour the funds from lords-to-be, and in return New Labour not only raises them to the peergae, but keeps the funds flowing by towing the LFI line.

“Where’s “the criminal purchase of British foreign policy” been going on then?”

See above.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6933158.ece

Agreed. I think it is Brown who will be ‘regretting his words’, not Cameron.

Nonsense. No staff have lost their jobs because of the Times investigation in 2007 or the CSC’s report and Gilligan’s articles in the Telegraph. The ‘mosque’ itself is part of Fethullah Gulen’s personal global waqf and they host UK Milli Gorus seminars, classes and preachers.

What is not at issue is the shameless way that Brown played the Muslim-card at PMQs. Nobody is for one second suggesting that all Muslims are extremists or any such blase rubbish. What is at issue though is why a foundation is able to claim charitable status, run 4 schools (4 not 3 – primary/nursery in both Slough and Seven Sisters) and overtly promote a sectarian agenda, despite being a HuT front; being staffed and run by HuTers; and using the founder of HuT’s seminal treatise on Islamic revolution as a pedagogical wellspring.

It’s all very well claiming that ALL faith schools are divisive and, in the interests of fairness subjecting some to stringent checks and not others. But, we know that ideas of hatred for the ‘other’ do not and never have emanated from CoE schools…the problem is that officials are so hamstrung by political correctness that they can’t call a spade an extremist sectarian weltanschauung.

3) Tory policy is to roll back the frontiers of the state and make it easy for groups of parents and non-profit organisation to access public funds to set up schools: this would seem to make it much easier for people you don’t like to set up schools than it is now.

Yup I agree, on the matter of superstition based sectarian schools in general and on Muslim schools in particular, the Tories are liable to be worse than Labour.

2) However they had received funding for their nursery part as part of the Government subsidy of nursery care for 3 and 4 years olds. Administered by local authorities though not central government. Also at some point (how recently is disputed) there had been a considerable overlap in personnel between the schools and HBT. In the case of the slough school there had been a shakeup when the local mosque (their landlord) had found out who was involved.

3) Tory policy is to roll back the frontiers of the state and make it easy for groups of parents and non-profit organisation to access public funds to set up schools: this would seem to make it much easier for people you don’t like to set up schools than it is now.

Indeed the groups of Islamic parents and non-profit organisations in this case had to go outside of the state structure to set up a school and could only access funds by a roundabout nursery provision; the Tories seem to be promising in the future it will be much easier for them.