The following letter was published in The Observer newspaper on Sunday 22 February.
Written by MCB Secretary General Zara Mohammed, the letter responded highlighted how the ‘Trojan Horse Hoax’, based on a fake letter that relied on anti-Muslim tropes, affects Muslim communities to this day.
Sonia Sodha seems to acknowledge, albeit grudgingly, that the Trojan Horse Affair was indeed overshadowed by a “false narrative” of violent extremism in some Birmingham schools, a narrative that was fuelled by a phantom letter and relied on false tropes of regressive Muslim attitudes.
The allegations stoked Islamophobia on a national scale and Muslim communities are still living with the consequences. Concerns about child protection, governance and the role religion and culture play in schools are valid and should be discussed openly. Parents, teachers, governors and education officials could have come together through mutual respect to navigate expressions of faith in our school system in an inclusive way.
Instead, policymakers and the media were blinded by a moral panic about Muslims, a suspicion of their motives and sheer prejudice about their beliefs and customs.
To put it simply: the Trojan Horse hoax was weaponised, compounding institutional racism.
Sadly, Sonia Sodha provides us all with a textbook example of how the media and the establishment close ranks to justify their collusion.
Zara Mohammed,
Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain
London E1