This is a press release from the Centre for Social Cohesion
In today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Conservative Party Leader David Cameron challenged Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the findings of the Centre for Social Cohesion’s (CSC) latest report, Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy.
Cameron, who has promised to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), asked the Prime Minister why the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation (ISF), a charity run by HT members that manages two primary schools and a nursery in London, has received over £113,000 in government grants – a fact revealed by the CSC in the Sunday Telegraph last month. Following the revelations, Haringey Council suspended ISF’s funding.
As the CSC report shows, HT is a revolutionary Islamist group that supports violent jihad and is using front groups to embed its divisive ideology into local communities. Cameron stated today that HT is a group that says “Jews should be killed wherever you find them”.
Cameron added that the Opposition has been voicing its concern over the ISF to the Prime Minister for the past month and demanded to know again why HT has still not been banned. Furthermore, since the CSC’s publication the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Michael Gove MP, has written to Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), asking why the ISF had received public money.
In response, the Prime Minister stated that the two schools have been subject to Ofsted inspections. However, the CSC can confirm that only the ISF school in Slough, Berkshire, has been inspected. Its school in Haringey – the Council providing government funding – has never been inspected.
On 9 November 2009, Vernon Coaker MP, Minister of State (Schools and Learners), stated that schools or nurseries can only receive public funding once they have been registered with the DCSF. However, neither the ISF nursery nor school in Haringey have a DCSF registration number.
The Prime Minister promised that Cameron’s concerns will be investigated. The CSC as well as the report’s authors, Houriya Ahmed and Hannah Stuart, welcome these timely and important questions by David Cameron and look forward to the results of the Prime Minister’s inquiry into the matter.
Notes to editors:
– For more details of the CSC’s report, an executive summary can be read here and the full reporthere.
– The ISF Trustees’ Report and Financial Statements (2007/08) revealed that the organisation received £113,411 in government grants that year. ISF confirmed that the money came from the government’s ‘Free Entitlement’ and ‘Pathfinder’ programmes.
– In 2005, HT members set up the ISF, a registered charity which runs two primary schools; one in Slough, Berkshire and one in Haringey, North London. Two of the ISF’s four trustees are HT members: Yusra Hamilton is a member of HT and the wife of Taji Mustafa, Media Representative; Farah Ahmed, an ISF trustee and author of the ISF religious curriculum, is also a member of HT. A 2009 Ofsted inspection of the ISF Slough school lists Yusra Hamilton as the school’s proprietor and Farah Ahmed the Head teacher.
