THA, WTF!
Go listen to episode five of The Trojan Horse Affair podcast. This is some of the craziest shit I’ve ever heard.
In this episode, it is revealed that a science teacher at a British public school offered a sex education lesson to teenage boys. As one does. But here, unlike other sex ed classes, the teacher informed these boys that rape is perfectly acceptable. He assured his class that non-consensual sex is not a posiblity within a marriage because, according to God, no wife has the right to deny sex to her husband. We learn that this lesson and a worksheet on the topic, one emblazoned with the teacher’s scriptural defence of rape, was accidentally discovered by a veteran teacher, named Steve, who was filling in for the regular science teacher. And we learn that Steve informed his wife, Sue, who also worked at the school, about the lesson and its accompanying worksheet.
The podcast’s reporters share that when this pair of now-retired Birmingham school employees learned of this crazy lesson they brought their concerns forward to the responsible authorities at the school. They tell us, further, that nothing appeared to come of their complaint.
This was in the UK and in the second decade of the 21st century. I can’t help but imagine walking into a high school (or either of the schools my parents worked at, and even back thirty years ago) and dropping such a lesson myself. Could as much as ten minutes elapse after photocopying the first worksheet before I was dragged outside by my hair by the secretary, tied to the school’s flagpole by a gaggle of lunch staff and teaching assistants, and then set alight by a growing mob of parents and teachers? If it took even ten minutes the only possible explanations would be either that my colleagues had been drugged or they'd been replaced by some very poorly designed replicas... Also, read no further if you think sexual assault is culturally relative or that rape should be promoted in the public school curriculum. You and I, I'm affraid, have some irreconcilable differences of opinion.
Though upset and concerned the couple didn't want to hand what they knew would be a bombshell to the notoriously inflammatory UK press. So, on the urgings of their son, a science professor, we learn that Sue and Steve drafted a letter detailing the incident, with a plan to approach a third-party that might take the situation seriously. That third party was the British Humanist Society, the century-old organization known for its fervent opposition to religious bias within public institutions but also with a history and mandate of supporting human rights through evidence-based dialogue. And who better? However, we learn that before the couples’ complaints were shared more broadly, an assembly was held at the school to correct what was previously taught to the boys in science class. As a result, we’re told, Sue and Steve dropped the issue. But, it turns out, all of this was just the beginning.
The couple go on to explain that following this incident they grew increasingly worried about religiously-motivated changes made to their public school. These changes included things like: the sexes being actively prevented from mingling; girls being removed from events where males were in attendance; girls whose clothes conform to the school’s dress code nonetheless being told by male teachers that their skirts were too short; all the school’s leadership roles becoming occupied by males; making the calls-to-prayer, that were traditionally only played during Ramadan, into a daily practice; teachers telling kids that those who don’t pray are bad Muslims; and a general sense that teachers at the school were no longer celebrating kids’ faith but dictating a strict set of beliefs and behaviours promoted by a small group of men in leadership at the school. Importantly, none of these circumstances or allegations are refuted by the reporters; instead, they simply tell us that some students and staff, apparently, had no problem with any of the above.
This, we are assured, is evidence that there could not possibly have been any conservative religious elements steering this public school's policy, or something. The podcasters don’t seem to notice that all of this is happening outside, and not within, the most hyper-conservative faith-oriented hot-spots on the planet. The above didn’t unfold at Bible camp in Mississippi or in a village overlooking the Gulf of Aden but in a public school in the West Midlands of England, an hour's train ride from London. None of this, in their mind, deviates in the least from typical British public schools and only mirrors the community in which the school is embedded.
Another specific example is given by Sue of a male teacher being publicly rude and unprofessional with a young female volunteer during a school trip. After this episode, the volunteer brought this up with Sue, the school’s field trip coordinator. Sue told the woman she needed to report the issue herself to the school's head teacher. Sue then explains that, when she later followed up to see if anything was done about what she understood to be an uncalled-for public outburst, she was brought into the head teacher’s office and barked at for being vindictive and trying to bring the school into disrepute.
We’re told Sue highlighted this issue later, under oath, as indicative of the shift in treatment toward women and girls she and others experienced at the school. The reporters seek more information from the young woman involved in this particular incident. She refuses an interview but provides a written statement. The statement explains that if she had wanted to make a formal complaint she would have done so at the time and that, in effect, she didn’t need some crazy old lady speaking on her behalf and that said crazy old lady must be suffering delusions. It seems this makes sense to everyone.
Completely disregarded by the reporters is the fact that the woman confirms, does not deny, that the incident took place. They also seem to miss that the experience was so significant to this woman at the time that she divulged what happened to another woman. Sue didn't attend the field trip and the woman's private incident report is how Sue learned of the unprofessional outburst. We’re told none of this matters and that the whole episode was effectively a figment of Sue’s very active imagination (with a strong suggestion that all of it was spurred by her little more than her ignorance of cultural relativism or seething racism, or perhaps a combination of both.)
The reporters eventually explain that many of Sue and Steve’s concerns were corroborated by other teachers and students (including the initial incident of sanctioning rape with religious reference during a sex education lesson in science class.) But the interviewers didn’t wish to share any conversations or written statements from people who had difficulties or their own allegations. More than that, they suggest there was a lack of women willing to formally go on record against the school’s administration (and thereby their own community.) This is presented neither as evidence of the culture of misogyny at the school or community more broadly nor as evidence that all of the above sexism was normalized. It's not that these women and girls didn’t perceive what is, under British law, discrimination and abuse as discrimination or abuse. No. Despite all of the above (and even with an additional note about East Birmingham having among the highest rates of domestic violence in the country), we’re told the only possible explanation for the absence of women and girls coming forward is that there were no serious problems of any kind to report. It really is some deeply probing investigative journalism we're exposed to here.
Further, excerpts from an interview with someone who disagreed with Steve and Sue’s interpretation of events is offered. And, just like the letter-writer above, this woman does not dispute the allegations. She does though assert her personal sense that sexism, rape, homophobia and the like need to be understood through a carefully calibrated lens of cultural relativism. We’re told Sue and Steve’s assessment that this public school was becoming evermore aggressive in its religiosity and with an ugly bias against girls (again, with a formal lesson promoting sexual assault, on religious grounds, in a science class [!!!]) was nothing more than ill-concealed ignorance of and insensitivity toward someone else’s religion brought about by these whistleblowers’ own skin colour (rather than their status as non-Muslims), we're told. That's basically science right there. But wait, it gets so much better.
Paired with that, Sue and Steve describe male teachers having regular male-only meetings in the head teachers office, suggesting this was professionally inappropriate and further evidence of the problem they were seeing. The reporters make this out to be a sign of the couple's inherent racism. One reporter says, “What's threatening about men speaking to each other? And why does it carry this sinister kind of edge to it that here's people filing into Moz's room and speaking, and they're all men, there must be something dodgy going on?”
The podcast team offers this while fully aware that: this group referred to themselves as “The Park View Brotherhood”; they formed their own private WhatsApp group under this same name, populated by like-minded men across the district; and, further, that the group was shut down after being exposed. More than that, if you go looking (or just listen to episode six of this podcast) you’ll find that an investigation of this group turned over thousands of private messages revealing discussions that fully support Sue and Steve’s assessment: that there was a strong ethos of gross intolerance within the group – an ethos generated out of and defended by continual religious reference – that seeped into the school culture and informed policy.
These messages, as admitted to by these reporters, included brutal misogyny and homophobia. For instance, in response to a news article about gay marriage from 2013 (that's 2013 not 1913), a school deputy head teacher writes, "These animals are going out full force. As teachers we must be aware and counter their satanic ways of influencing young people." Elsewhere he explains that "the problem of homosexuality is rife ... a sign of the end times ... May Allah further expose this and give us the strength to deal and eradicate it." The reporters carefully edit nearly all of this out of the account the provide. Along with this garbage, group members share links to extremist content, a fair bit of anti-Semitic nonsense, and all with a persistent undercurrent of anti-Western sentiment including the promulgation of conspiracy theories. Half a dozen teachers, for example, shared links and videos suggesting the Boston Marathon bombing and the murder of Lee Rigby were elaborate hoaxes staged to make Muslims look bad.
Most of this is either not shared or entirely disregarded in this and the following episode of the podcast. At best, the reporters argue that the most vile sexism, a passionate desire to eradicate Satan-made homosexuality by any means possible, along with publicly calling for the victory of the mujahideen are all wildly popular, mainstream ideas and not uncommon or controversial ones in the Muslim community. (Phew!) They also pretend these group messages (which overtly reveal many teachers, admin, and other staff members' stated ambitions to Islamise public schools, promote ethnic and gender segregation, and remove standard curriculum such as basic sex education) somehow reveal, well, the opposite. This whole podcast is adamant that none of the above was taking place even while they describe it and we have these pronouncements and protestations in folks' own words. Members of this group continually shared their aims to direct public schools (again, not private or religious schools) away from British, European, and Western norms and toward what we're told by these British Muslims themselves are Islamic norms. These teachers and school admin even advocate for having (and actually did have) school events that included Salafi, Deobandi, and Islamist speakers. For example, they entertained Shaykh Shady al-Suleiman: a fellow who got himself placed on Denmark's highly exclusive list of global hate preachers and banned from entering that country due to his uncommonly exuberant homophobia and sexism. All of this is astonishingly well-documented and not refuted by these podcasters. But, again, like with the religious sanction of abuse in science class, these reporters will have us believe none of this is interesting or even relevant. They assure us that al-Suleiman's homophobia, sexism, and daily public celebrations of Islamic guerrillas, for instance, do not deviate in the least from community norms. So, the only relevance here, apparently, is in exposing what they see as this couple’s not-so-secret bias against normal every-day Muslims – and not the weird and creeping discrimination and Islamisation spelled out and enacted by a cadre of characters who, by their own written word, are full of terrible ideas and probably have no business teaching, certainly in public schools.
I can’t fathom any, never mind all, of the above happening in a public school, anywhere. But we’re even told that when Sue and Steve's complaints were made public, they inspired other whistleblowers (including Muslim women) to come forward with accounts of growing sexism, homophobia, inappropriate behaviours, and the encroachment of religion in their schools. The reporters don’t demonstrate that none of this happened but, instead, demand every example must have been overblown, because... well, Islamophobia exists or something. More than that, they imply that thinking any of the above was out of line in any way is, actually, the surest sign of the very entrenched Islamophobia and racism they’re out to combat with their most courageous sleuthings. (The sophistry is strong with these two!) The reporters also conceal that an investigation recommended teaching bans for these people after concluding that pupils had, in fact, been "immersed in orthodox Islamic doctrine" and that there was a coordinated attempt to include "undue religious influence" at several state-funded schools in the region.
Wildest of all, in the middle of all of this we learn (as an aside, essentially) that – due to the lack of any investigation or reprimand of any sort resulting from the pro-assault sex education lesson, because sexual assault is endorsed in mainstream doctrine, according to everyone who matters – the science teacher responsible continued teaching. Oh and, by the way, in March of 2021 this same teacher was convicted and jailed for having sexually abused a child after convincing her that she was his wife. Again, the problem here is not that the school’s administration or the Trojan Horse investigation failed to find or remove religiously motivated sexual predators (avowed homophobes, evolution deniers, inequality mongers, etc...) but that any inquiry of any sort was formed in the first place.
And that’s it: even with all of this out in the open, The New York Times and these reporters under them – a doctor-turned-reporter and veteran producer and host of This American Life (so, not a pair of dudes suffering from catastrophic football-related head injuries) – seek to drive home their assertion that there is no, and can be no, causal relationship or even vague correlation between the values and views one is willing to hold, share, and defend (in public or in private on WhatsApp) and that person’s behaviour. One's life-long convictions are entirely and mysteriously unrelated to their actions in the world. Belief that a person can't sexually assault a minor, if said minor is their wife, cannot ever translate into intentions or real-world operations. Everything in life is just spontaneous randomness or benign 'culture' and immune to scrutiny or criticism. So, publicly promoting abuse (teaching and defending such abuse on righteous spiritual grounds, and with citations, while forwarding the view that scripture trumps law and that rights should be genital-based) isn’t in any way an expression of one’s wishes or beliefs, nor can these tell us how someone does or will behave. No chance. In fact, this whole podcast is here to sell us a magical reverse logic. Here, a woman defending the rights of women and girls, for instance, is the best possible example of someone who doesn’t actually care about human rights or even her own. No. Instead, if she’ll just be honest with herself, she'll see that she knows nothing of her own experience and is really only animated by the worst kind of hatred. Right? I mean, the findings of this pair of “investigative journalists”, and backed by the New York Times, is that the problem at this school and the others like it was not the scripturally-informed culture of ignorance, misogyny, and worse that overtook this public school and others (and that the purveyors vigorously celebrated in writing and do not, to this day, deny.) No. The problem here is those who called out this garbage. Amazing.
Better still, we're even told this whole episode is derived from wildly decontextualized snippets of a single seven-hour-long interview. You read that right, you read that correctly: 7 hours. Is this fitting with journalistic standards? Is this even ethical? Can we agree that by hour four an interview transitions to an interrogation? (Just imagine trying to get someone who loves to talk and does so for a living – Oprah, Jerry Seinfeld, your English teacher – to speak about something they're thrilled about for seven straight hours.) I wonder why this couple sounds frazzled and annoyed by the end? More than that, we're told that this was a terribly difficult interrogation for the interrogators due to the failure of those being interrogated to provide sufficient volumes of tea and biscuits... across SEVEN HOURS! Wow. And to cap off the whole episode, we get to hear these reporters (people we're led to believe are not a couple of idiot children) – having captured their 'gotcha moment' and sounding as if they're making off with the man's Rolex – fleeing the scene by scrambling into their car and then driving over this retired couple's hedge.
I strongly recommend you go listen, and listen carefully, to the whole podcast. Listen to what you are given and not just what they want you to come away believing.
I’m telling you, this thing is amazing.
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RESOURCES
“The Trojan Horse Affair podcast” - New York Times
"Report into allegations concerning Birmingham schools arising from the ‘Trojan Horse’ letter" - House of Commons
"Review of Park View Educational Trust" - Education Funding Agency
"Plan to reveal Trojan Horse whistle-blowers 'beggars belief', warn heads" - Times Educational Supplement
"Banned school governor Tahir Alam fights gay equality lessons" - Johnston
"Teacher who called homosexuals 'animals' says he has now changed his views" - Richardson
"Trojan horse: the real story behind the fake 'Islamic plot' to take over schools" - Shackle
"'Big bad Muslim': The play that allowed Trojan Horse teachers to start healing" - Khan
The British Humanist Society
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