Trojan Horse Affair Event 2025

Discussions were held on the 10th anniversary of the affair that facilitated the Prevent duty being pushed into education

Summary of Discussions and Ideas

These boxes present the main points taken from the presentations by experts – while the videos capture individual statements 10 years on

THE WIDER CONTEXT AND IMPLICATIONS OF THE TROJAN HORSE AFFAIR
Prof John Holmwood, Emeritus Professor at the University of Nottingham, and co-author of the People’s Review of Prevent

  • The school takeover issue is at the heart of the Trojan Horse Affair (THA) and it holds the key to unlocks who was responsible and why.
  • It must be stated that there was no evidence of extremism found at Park View school during the THA. 
  • Although the Clarke Report referred to “undue religious influence” at Park View, the school had followed all statutory requirements for collective worship in schools. 

  • One of the unasked questions in the media is “how do you take over a school?”
  • The answer to this is that the only way you can take over a school is via the academies programme. 
  • This requires the active involvement of officials in the Department of Education. 
  • This means there should be memos of meetings and records, which gradually did indeed become available for the Clarke report.
  • The irony is that Park View was a sponsoring school in the academies programme. 
  • This was because of the major contribution staff at the school had made to British society, turning around failing school.
  • It had been specifically identified as an outstanding school and one worthy of being a sponsor school by the Department.
      
  • Despite this, the THA was used to prove “the failure of multiculturalism” being touted at the time.
  • Louise Casey said that people had underplayed the issue of “extremism” and did not challenge “the small group of parents/teachers” that were supposedly “extremist” – this was due, she said, to “fear of called racist”. 
  • This modus operandi operates today: it furthers the notions that multiculturalism and Muslim participation are “excess demands”. 
  • Any reluctance to counter these emerging and necessary trends is due to a “fear of being seen as racist”. 
  • However, this is a mask for cultural nationalism.
  • It also entails repudiating the liberal values set out in the definition of Fundamental British Values.
  • Uncomfortably for the Prevent duty which relies on these values, this repudiation is now mainstream in British politics. 
  • Nonetheless Prevent gets termed “light touch” when applied to Muslims, but there are “too many referrals” for the far-right.

HOW THE TROJAN HORSE AFFAIR HAS IMPACTED MUSLIM EDUCATION AND RELIGIOSITY
Dr. Rizwaan Sabir, Liverpool John Moores University, Centre for the Study of Crime, Criminalisation and Social Exclusion  

  • This impact must begin with an analysis of how the THA was covered in the media in the UK. 
  • A recent study (led by Rizwaan) found that 61.5% of the reporting focussed on “Islamist extremism”, whereas even the issues being raised by the THA review and the major investigators were not of “Islamist extremism” but of poor governance.
  • So there was a wilful absence of accurate reporting on this key difference. 
  • Certain political actors and think tanks were intent on creating a narrative linking the story to “Islamist extremism”.
  • The message that emerged was that Muslim educational leaders were not allowed to make administrative errors – or to have  leadership problems; rather the problem was “Islamist extremism”.

  • The result was that Muslim beliefs and practices became a problem.
  • Since the THA, Islamophobia operates not just through racism, but through “religification”.
  • This means forcing a perceived idea of Muslim religiosity onto Muslims, and making those who follow these ideas a problem. 
  • The outcome of this is an attempt to change basic theological principles of Islam.
  • This has also been facilitated by the acceptance of Fundamental British Values as rational and reasonable and religiosity expressed by Muslims as not being compatible with these values.
  • This notion was also furthered by the THA.

  • The THA fortified the idea that schools are “deeply contested terrains of ideas”.
  • It was used to securitise the education sector through the introduction of the Prevent duty under safeguarding. 
  • The impact of this on education cannot be overstated. 
  • Despite the fact that over 80% of Muslim school pupils have political views and share them, only 30% share them at school. Furthermore, 74% learn about political issues from social media.
  • The THA has contributed to an environment where a whole generation of Muslims is being deprived of a safe and proper education.

  • Some people might argue that we should be vigilant about “Islamist extremism”, however the linking of Islam with extremism is incorrect and harmful since there are ways to be critical of Islam without being Islamophobic. 
  • The continued positioning of the THA in public discourse is politically expedient.
  • It can be wheeled out as a shock tactic in more recent cases such as in the Michaela School case to demonise Islamic worship in a way that violates both traditional Judeo-Christian secularism and British educational values. 

HOW THE TROJAN HORSE AFFAIR CONTINUES TO BE USED AGAINST MUSLIM POLITICAL AGENCY
Ajmal Hussain, Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick

  • It’s widely accepted that the THA reinforced certain tropes about Muslims.
  • This was proven by the emergence of the Birmingham Education Partnership, which was created in the wake of the affair. 
  • Over the past decade, the announcement of Muslims as independent candidates in the political race proves that Muslim agency persists despite attempts to exclude Muslims from mainstream politics.
  • However, there is corresponding push-back by the state. 
  • This is happening from the Reform Party, from which the tropes popularised by THA persist.

  • People feel enabled to push back against Muslim agency, Muslims claiming legitimate space in discussions or at the political table.  
  • Baroness Sayeeda Warsi states that smearing Muslims is a deliberate strategy, giving examples of how Muslims in political spheres are being actively closed down within government. She highlights the THA as a key enabling event. 
  • Muslims in general often opt to remain silent; and a mute subject is what the state desires. 
  • David Goldberg puts forward how racism works in new modalities in the UK, and he terms the THA as “formative” in denying Muslims and people of colour political agency, not just in terms of political representation but in terms of representing themselves on their own terms more broadly. He uses the term “racial Palestinianisation” to define a prototype for the treatment of minority ethnic communities.
  • The THA presented Muslim parents and teachers seeking to define how they and their children were represented in the world and the response of the state, and the presentation was to deny them agency, and to shatter any potential for solidarity.

  • All the legislation brought on the back of THA would ordinarily have been challenged by civil rights groups.
  • But the weaponisation of Islamophobia disabled the left and civil rights groups. 
  • This meant a huge fallout for civil rights broadly, to the detriment of other causes.
  • Still, it is encouraging that Muslims remain engaged in political representation work and there are Muslim groups tackling Islamophobia where most anti-racism groups have left this space.