As is traditional at the end of each year in the West people review what has happened with a view to learning lessons and setting new goals for the next year. However, for organisations that have a sinister agenda this is an opportunity to vaguely summarise the past year’s events, loosely link them together to make outrageous insinuations, and thus justify even more despicable plans for the next year. Such was the case this week with the secular extremists in the mainstream media and the Office for Standards in Education Ofsted. Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman released a statement in which she accused a number of “faith” schools of having been judged by her own organisation of failing to meet the secular standards that she herself set, as they were “spreading beliefs that clash with British values.”
The media in turn wasted no time in promoting her call for more power to impose her own liberal secular beliefs and values on all the children in the UK. The fact that millions of British people, Muslims and others, do not share her extremist secular values did not factor into her statement, as she claimed that her love of democracy and support of the anti-religious LGBT lobby’s agenda were “mainstream thinking” and the real British values, and that religious institutions were undermining them.
This should not come as a surprise, as this is the same Amanda Spielman who ludicrously claimed that the hijab was a sign of premature sexualisation of young Muslim girls, without a hint of irony in the hyper-sexualised atmosphere created by the media, fashion and popular culture industries.
For someone who can shamelessly twist the facts so blatantly, it cannot have been difficult for her to ignore the contradictory logic in her recent outburst. Her pretence is that the religious schools have failed to meet academic standards, yet they are being failed by her own organisation on the grounds that their values are different to hers, regardless of their academic performance.
Her attack went beyond the schools, however, as she then accused the religious schools serving the surrounding community of “deliberately resisting” beliefs and values that she does not agree with, as they are not “British” enough for her. She said “We have found an increasing number of conservative religious schools where the legal requirements that set the expectations for shared values and tolerance clash with community expectations.”
The secular liberal elite’s ‘Muscular Liberalism’ is increasingly exposing the emptiness of their professed values. A Department for Education spokeswoman is reported to have said “we changed the law and the requirements on schools so that they have to actively promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and the mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” They are willing to sacrifice all of their “freedom of religion” to protect their most important freedom, that of ownership and their desire to hegemonize the world’s economy.
It would be easy to assume that Ms Spielman has a personal grudge driving her agenda, which may be a factor, however, we should recognise that Ofsted and the media are driven by a far more sinister agenda of the liberal secular elite. Jewish and Christian schools and communities have long taught held views at odds with the “mainstream,” yet only now that the focus is on tackling the rise of Islam in the world are they all subject to criticism for opposing the ever-changing “British mainstream” values.
It is the imminent return of Islamic Khilafah (caliphate) on the way of Prophethood that they worry about, as it will focus the world’s attention on their unjust colonial exploitation that has gone unchecked for the past century. With this paranoia of the elite, the atmosphere in the West has become increasingly and notably hostile to all religious values, and particularly Islam.
We shouldn’t be fooled by the rhetoric of the secular establishment, that it believes in tolerance and religious freedom. It is no more likely to heed these restraints than the wolf would respond to the complaint of the sheep.
However, we should not shy away from explaining the failure of the secular capitalist way of life to look after all the people, in particular its inability to deal with minorities and its favouring the benefit of a powerful elite over all others.
Muslims should realise that expecting Muslims to be treated like other religious groups is no longer appropriate in this atmosphere of intolerance of all religious values and practices. Rather the focus of our criticism should be on exposing the irrational basis of the secular creed (aqeedah) itself, along with the failure of its ideology to bring anything other than misery to mankind.
Such direct pressure on Muslims to conform to the backward “mainstream British” values of democracy and individual liberty, by imposing it upon the children who are incapable of arguing against its fallacy, should only strengthen our resolve to stand up on their behalf, calling all mankind to understand and witness the pure deen of Islam.
وَلَا تَهِنُوا وَلَا تَحْزَنُوا وَأَنْتُمُ الْأَعْلَوْنَ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ مُؤْمِنِينَ
“Do not grieve and get disheartened: for you have the upper hand if you are the believers.” [Al-Imran: 139]
