Peter Oborne can be, ahem, rather eccentric on certain issues. Here's one of them, where he backs the MEND view of the Trojan Horse affair...and look who's retweeting his contentious claim that the Trojan Horse plot "never happened in the first place"!
Mark Easton downplayed the significance of the affair at the time, dismissing the claims of Islamic extremism and equating the activities criticised in official reports with those practised in Christian faith schools. For him it showed 'diversity' not 'extremism'.
He is indeed and for some reason seems to have become heavily involved with Muslim matters. Yet some of his stances seem odd and contradictory, as for instance being critical of Saudi Arabia and taking a benign view of Iran but standing up for the Sunni-influenced schools involved in the plot. Just how deep was his investigation into that? Quite apart from the fake letter he referred to, there was a lot of evidence gathered and more than one official investigation and report with findings of what went on. Can that all legitimately be brushed aside and dismissed as Islamophobia? Oborne has also sat on a Commission on Muslims and participation in public life
ReplyDeleteset up by a pressure group originating in East London. It's not all bad: at least he has a low opinion of Alastair Campbell. As for that Mark Easton article, it is a shocker in its facile false equivalences. He goes as far as to pray in aid the wearing of a school cap or hat as if that has the same purpose and meaning as girls wearing Islamic scarves and all that goes with that, while failing to mention small matters such as segregating female and male pupils, with girls sitting at the back etc etc. There was so much more stuff of that kind and worse, that went on in those schools.