First, the bad news: Last week a report in the Sunday Telegraph highlighted the Shakhsiyah Foundation, an Hizb ut-Tahrir front organisation which runs three schools in north London, had received in excess of £113,000 from government grants. The foundation’s lead trustee, Yusra Hamilton, is a leading Hizb activist who is married to Taji Mustafa, the group’s chief spokesman in Britain.
Now, for the good news: Within seven days of this information going public, Haringey Council has axed funding to the Shakhsiyah Foundation:
The public money – from the Government’s Early Years Fund – was paid to help run the nursery school and two Islamic primary schools where children are taught key elements of Hizb’s ideology from the age of five. It was administered by the local authority, Haringey.
In a statement, the Home Office said: “Haringey Council has decided to suspend its allocation of Early Years Funding, to the schools concerned, pending an investigation.”
The most pressing question that remains is how did three “legitimate Muslim schools” become the cover for Hizb ut-Tahrir operations under the noses of the schools authorities in Haringey?
Other trustees of the Shakhsiyah Foundation who are Hizb members or activists include Farah Ahmed, the head teacher of the Slough school, who has written in a Hizb journal condemning the “corrupt Western concepts of materialism and freedom”.
On their website, the schools say their “ultimate goal” and “foremost work” is the creation of an “Islamic personality” in children. The creation of an “Islamic personality” is a key tenet of Hizb’s ideology. The schools’ history curriculum states that children are taught that “there must be one ruler of the khilafah [caliphate]“. The schools’ website says that “in the glorious history of Islam… the Sharia was the norm”. Children are taught Arabic from the age of three.
A former teacher at one of the schools told yesterday how they were set up as a “great way of creating Hizb ut-Tahrir propaganda”. She said the schools were started by a group of female Hizb members and activists but that the group had also brought in some non-Hizb staff.
The former teacher said: “The concept behind it was to allow the school to speak for itself and then to lure [pupils] in through that doorway.”
The information on the Shakhsiyah Foundation was uncovered in a new report published by the Centre for Social Cohesion, authored by Hannah Stewart and Houriya Ahmed (who also blogs here at The Spittoon).