A former schools director accused of orchestrating a plot to promote hardline Islamist religious teaching in British schools has lost his appeal against a government ban on holding leadership roles in mainstream education.
Tahir Alam was identified as a central figure in the so-called Trojan Horse affair, an alleged attempt to oust head teachers and introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into some schools in the city of Birmingham.
Mr Alam was banned from a management position at any independent school after the government found that he had undermined “fundamental British values”. Mr Alam, a former director of Park View Educational Trust which ran three schools in the city, was held responsible for inviting extremist speakers to address pupils, the use of unacceptable teaching materials and promoting intolerance, according to a Government notice.
Mr Alam appealed the ruling this year backed by £20,000 of public donations and a legal team working for free on his case. But a tribunal found against him in June in a ruling that was withheld from publication because of the “sensitivity of the evidence”, according to a government spokesman. Officials have declined to release the full conclusions of the tribunal to The National.
Mr Alam – who has worked in education for 20 years - laid out plans of how state schools should meet the needs of an estimated 400,000 Muslim pupils in a paper published by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) in 2007, which included recommendations on foreign language teaching, collective religious worship and the nature of the curriculum. The Muslim Brotherhood played an important role in setting up and running the MCB, according to a report on the Brotherhood’s role in Britain ordered by then prime minister David Cameron in 2015.
Mr Alam says that he has been unjustly vilified by attempting to raise school standards by encouraging parents to hold leaders of failing schools to account in Birmingham. He will lodge an appeal in the next week, according to his lawyer. “He’s very much determined to pursue it to the highest court possible,” said the solicitor Talha Ahmad.
The affair was sparked by a letter leaked to a local authority which described Mr Alam as the prime mover in a five-point strategy to take over a number of schools in Birmingham by promoting like-minded parents on to governing bodies and to push out existing head teachers.
A succession of inquiries failed to discover who sent the letter in 2014 but the affair sparked a political furore, including a public dispute between two senior ministers in the government of David Cameron over who was to blame for failing to address extremism in UK schools.
A government-appointed inquiry found no evidence of terrorism or radicalisation at schools in Birmingham but concluded that there were people in positions of influence who “espouse, endorse or fail to challenge extremist views,” said Peter Clarke, who headed one government-appointed inquiry.
His inquiry was passed details of a social media group known as the “Park View Brotherhood” that included senior teaching staff from the schools under investigation. The all-male group’s discussions included “highly offensive” comments about British troops, disparagement of different strands of Islam and scepticism about the truth of reports surrounding the death of Lee Rigby, a British soldier run over and stabbed to death by two radicalised Britons in southeast London in 2013.
“The numerous endorsements of hyperlinks to extremist speakers betray a collective mind-set that can fairly be described as an intolerant Islamist approach that denies the validity of alternative beliefs, lifestyles and value systems, including within Islam itself,” according to Mr Clarke’s 2015 report.
Mr Alam is only the second person to face lasting sanctions as a result of the inquiry. Five senior teachers who faced accusations of professional misconduct had the cases against them dropped because of flaws in the process earlier this year.
Two lifetime bans on teachers from one of the schools, Park View, were also overturned last year by the courts because of procedural failures in their case. The continuing fallout from the affair has raised questions that the education system remains ill-prepared to deal with similar allegations of such hard-line takeovers of schools.
A unit aimed at identifying extremism in schools was expanded after a 2015 government review found that education officials lacked “inquisitiveness” on issues relating to the infiltration by outside interests. Senior teaching sources told The National that they were not satisfied that adequate steps had been taken.
Ofsted inspected more than 20 schools in the city as a result of the allegations. The schools once under the control of the Park View Educational Trust were taken over by another schools group in 2015.
One of the schools, renamed as Rockwood Academy, launched a series of initiatives including an army cadet unit to “instil British pride in students and prevent them from being radicalised”, according to the school’s website.
Mr Alam – who has described the case against him as a witch-hunt - has been turned into a “toxic brand” because of his ban, according to his lawyer. He has even been rejected as a volunteer to teach English for a national refugee charity. “On the basis of this banning order, he has been barred from earning a living for himself,” said Mr Ahmad.
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
A timeline of the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language
- 2018: Formal work begins
- November 2021: First 17 volumes launched
- November 2022: Additional 19 volumes released
- October 2023: Another 31 volumes released
- November 2024: All 127 volumes completed
MATCH INFO
Real Madrid 2
Vinicius Junior (71') Mariano (90 2')
Barcelona 0
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The biog
Age: 35
Inspiration: Wife and kids
Favourite book: Changes all the time but my new favourite is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Best Travel Destination: Bora Bora , French Polynesia
Favourite run: Jabel Hafeet, I also enjoy running the 30km loop in Al Wathba cycling track
The specs: 2018 Opel Mokka X
Price, as tested: Dh84,000
Engine: 1.4L, four-cylinder turbo
Transmission: Six-speed auto
Power: 142hp at 4,900rpm
Torque: 200Nm at 1,850rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L / 100km
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
THE%20SPECS
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End of free parking
- paid-for parking will be rolled across Abu Dhabi island on August 18
- drivers will have three working weeks leeway before fines are issued
- areas that are currently free to park - around Sheikh Zayed Bridge, Maqta Bridge, Mussaffah Bridge and the Corniche - will now require a ticket
- villa residents will need a permit to park outside their home. One vehicle is Dh800 and a second is Dh1,200.
- The penalty for failing to pay for a ticket after 10 minutes will be Dh200
- Parking on a patch of sand will incur a fine of Dh300
Vidaamuyarchi
Director: Magizh Thirumeni
Stars: Ajith Kumar, Arjun Sarja, Trisha Krishnan, Regina Cassandra
Rating: 4/5
The%20specs
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Islamic%20Architecture%3A%20A%20World%20History
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Cinco in numbers
Dh3.7 million
The estimated cost of Victoria Swarovski’s gem-encrusted Michael Cinco wedding gown
46
The number, in kilograms, that Swarovski’s wedding gown weighed.
1,000
The hours it took to create Cinco’s vermillion petal gown, as seen in his atelier [note, is the one he’s playing with in the corner of a room]
50
How many looks Cinco has created in a new collection to celebrate Ballet Philippines’ 50th birthday
3,000
The hours needed to create the butterfly gown worn by Aishwarya Rai to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
1.1 million
The number of followers that Michael Cinco’s Instagram account has garnered.
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
Fire and Fury
By Michael Wolff,
Henry Holt
Brolliology: A History of the Umbrella in Life and Literature
By Marion Rankine
Melville House
North Pole stats
Distance covered: 160km
Temperature: -40°C
Weight of equipment: 45kg
Altitude (metres above sea level): 0
Terrain: Ice rock
South Pole stats
Distance covered: 130km
Temperature: -50°C
Weight of equipment: 50kg
Altitude (metres above sea level): 3,300
Terrain: Flat ice
