The Muslim Question (5) The Implications of Trevor Phillips’s Documentary for Muslims

This is the final part to a series of blogs analysing the recent Channel 4 documentary titled, “What British Muslims Really Think”

Part 1: An Orchestrated Attack on Islam

Part 2: Brief Profile of Trevor Phillips

Part 3: Trevor Phillips’ Propaganda and Normalisation of Muslim Minority Discrimination

Part 4: Trevor Phillips and the Forging of a Closed Society

Having delved into the Straussian nightmare neoconservatives are dog-whistling to implement for broader society in the previous article, here we will examine the implications of Trevor Phillips’ words for the Muslim minority by drawing parallels with particular events in history.

Evil to Outsiders

Alienating a particular minority in order to achieve neoconservative objectives necessitates an enemy.  Further, the Straussian conception of justice of the state, in the words of Shadia Drury, means doing “evil to enemies or outsiders”.[1]

By treating Muslims as the outsiders – “a nation within the nation” – the enemy is conceived and thus, evil unto them is legitimised.

Ofsted Inquisition at Muslim School in Birmingham

In my previous piece drawing parallels between the PREVENT duty and the Inquisition, I drew attention to Ofsted’s invasive line of questioning, unsettling children, and assessing the beliefs of children in accordance with the State’s contrived civic religion of “British values”.

My sources in Birmingham have brought attention to an Ofsted inspection which yields yet another example of Inquisitional, “radicalisation profiling”-style of questioning echoing the much despised Waltham Forest Council’s BRIT Project fiasco. If we recall, the Council in London had deceptively disseminated psychometric tests into Muslim majority schools which purported to analyse the level of “radicalisation”. The Council was exposed for lying and slammed for its Nazi-style ethnic profiling exercise as “shockingly Orwellian”.

This “shockingly Orwellian” reality has manifested again through Ofsted. My sources state that Inspectors at a Muslim faith school behaved in a similar fashion to the BRIT Project questionnaire and asked questions tailored to the “extremism” agenda, interrogating young children.

Post-Trojan Hoax: When “British Values” Bite

I felt a tendency to shake my head when I read a recent report highlighting the “equal” application of Ofsted guidelines in promoting “British values” to Christian and Jewish schools.

During the start of the Trojan Hoax attacks, state officials actively demonised Islamic beliefs by mixing orthodox practices with unsavoury acts in their statements, all the while dog-whistling Christian members of the public by suggesting some British values are “Christian”.  This was in tune with the broader political landscape at that time. Indeed, it has been strongly alleged that evangelical Christian teachers linked to Birmingham’s Riverside Church had major involvement in the writing of the fabricated “Trojan Horse” letter.  Teachers who brought allegations against Muslims included those of evangelical background, and the very same allegations against them were never investigated. Of course, such allegations, including Christian takeover plots (see here, here and here), were of no interest to the anti-Muslim, neocon Michael Gove. To scapegoat the Muslim minority only, while ignoring other schools, and to abuse the Muslim minority as some sort of glutton for punishment upon which the PREVENT Strategy which defines “British values” can be cemented, was nothing short of bullying and minority discrimination.

“British values” had become sacred in the attack against Islam and Muslims, as neoconservatives, scapegoating the Muslims, started to successfully engineer and impose these faux values for their longer-term agenda to court symbols necessary to unify and conform the people of Britain under a nationalist neo-religion which serves neoconservative interests.

Sometime after, though, Christian and Jewish faith schools began to feel some of the heat from the fire started by Michael Gove.

The Ironies of Neocon Zionist Michael Gove

And so the legacy of the paedophile-apologist, anti-Muslim, virulent neocon Zionist Michael Gove continues.

Recently, Gove made some extremist statements in the context of Israel’s actions.  Gove highlighted the rise in anti-Semitic attacks, which I believe we can all agree is a legitimate concern: attacks against people and their places of worship for who they are, the manifestations of their beliefs is reviled and must be condemned. What is also condemnable is when governments on the basis of their own (neoconservative) ideology formulate Nazi-esque policy to tackle “extremism” explicitly targeting a minority, erode liberties of all citizens in a claimed defence of liberty, and do everything they can to minimise government scrutiny when the breadcrumbs of crime lead to a door on Downing Street.

Gove’s criticism of the BDS movement in the discourse of anti-Semitism smokescreens the reality of the Zionist entity and attempts to delegitimise a legitimate struggle.  The Zionist entity has repeatedly and consistently violated international law in breaching the most fundamental of human rights of the Palestinians.  It has also, to the defiance of the world continued in its characteristic land-grabbing of Occupied Territories.  When a state violates international law, the UN Security Council can be used by States to formulate some response or intervention. This can be military or through the use of economic sanctions (a call made most recently by a Jewish senior MP).  Since the US, France and the UK, are allies of the Zionist entity, any meaningful response to restrain the lunacy exhibited by the Zionist state can be vetoed by any of the three accomplices to the Zionist entity’s crimes.   Any action thus is impossible and the only solution, besides a State invoking its right to military humanitarian intervention, is to engage and promote popular movements to force the offending state to desist.

The BDS movement can be characterised as a popular struggle with an aim to put a stop to the grave human rights violations, brutality against the Palestinian people and complete disregard for any proposed peace processes.