The people behind the 'Trojan Horse' plot, who allegedly imposed conservative Islamic values on state schools in Birmingham are back in teaching, despite being banned from the classroom, according to a report by The Sunday Times.
The report claimed that Tahir Alam and Razwan Faraz are allegdedly running informal classes in a different city and under a false name.
A third figure who helped run a Trojan Horse school, Mohammed Ashraf, has allegedly become secretary of a local constituency Labour Party. He has applied to be a Labour council candidate at the next local elections, but apparently had dropped the application, the newspaper reported. Ashraf was a governor at Golden Hillock School, which banned the teaching of some subjects and segregated boys and girls. He was later removed from the post.
Faraz, deputy head of one of the Trojan Horse schools and the brother of a convicted terrorist, was a key figure in the “Park View brotherhood” of teachers, a group on the messaging tool WhatsApp who expressed grossly bigoted and extremist views. Faraz, who is under an interim ban from teaching, is fighting a permanent ban in hearings due to conclude next month. He claims he is no longer an extremist and says he is “confident” of beating the ban. However, The Sunday Times has apparently established that Faraz has allegedly set up a Facebook account under a false name, Riz Pilgrim, in which he continues to express extreme views.
Alam, the former head of the Park View Educational Trust, is already under a permanent ban. He is appealing to the High Court to have it lifted, claiming he finds extremist views “completely unacceptable”. However, The Sunday Times reported that Alam has also allegedly expressed extremist views on Facebook recently.
Bans do not apply to informal schools not registered with the Department for Education, but MPs said they should. “It is just wrong that such a key figure in Trojan Horse should have any role in education,” said Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr.
