Trojan Hoax What Next?

Bit more than the length of Ramadan (thirty days) has passed since the NYT podcast The Trojan Hoax Affair was released and it has been met with silence by journalists, denial by some Muslim MPs from Birmingham and another intervention from Humanist UK so wet, it needed to be put in rice instead of taken seriously.

Yes, according to Humanist UK they couldn’t possibly be blamed as boosters of a moral panic over British Muslims as fifth columnists with access to corridors of power within Parliament that British Muslims could only dream of. They bare no responsibility when the likes cynically used by the likes of Michael Gove to further his crusade against Muslims, Humanist UK are pains to let us know they employ four brown bearded folk.

As Brian Reed says, the Trojan Hoax letter was a pretext for subsequent actions of the government. They hadn’t been tricked, they knew the letter was a hoax, they were pretty certain where it originated from, but they went along with the hysterical reporting surrounding the alleged Islamist plot anyway. With teacher bans, court cases and enhanced security measures for Muslim school kids in the form of a beefed up Prevent.

The Trojan Horse Affair podcast had been downloaded twelve million times in its first two weeks alone and topped the charts for podcasts. Yet there has been a staggering lack of follow up by media in the UK which is in stark contrast to how the story was first covered in 2014.

So why the silence over the revelations in The Trojan Hoax Affair podcast from our overwhelmingly white middle class and male, hoping to get a job with the two main parties’ newsrooms?

Well this isn’t just any old Islamophobia, this is Iberico ham displaying, shopping at M&S Islamophobia. This dinner party Islamophobia can sway policy change and bare down all the institutions of power down upon a marginalised community the establishment has decided to turn its ire on. Media are just complicit as Michael Gove in bringing about the increased securitization and demonising of British Muslims.

While newsrooms have largely ignored the podcast, they have commissioned columnists like Melanie Londonistan Phillips to rubbish the podcast in a paper no stranger to penning fake letter campaigns against British Muslims.

Birmingham Council has responded with either amnesia or threats of legal action against anyone attempting to get to the truth behind the fake Islamist takeover plot in Birmingham schools. They have made the statement leave this traumatic chapter behind them for the sake of Muslims in Birmingham.

This is what an elected official Bridgit Jones (no, not that one) an elected official in Labour run Birmingham council who was as transpires in the early episodes of the Trojan Horse affair intimately involved had to say in response to a question raised at a meeting after the release of the podcast. So my question in response to Birmingham city Labour council is how can Muslims in your city and Muslims across this country move on when they are living with the impacts of Trojan Hoax today? It’s not you or your kids who have to live with Prevent and it was not your life personally ruined. Don’t you and others as elected officials have to at least be accountable to constituents in Birmingham?

Khalid Mahmood is what happens when the village idiot takes on the second role of a native informant. Now you may think this is a harsh characterisation of Khalid Mahmood MP and he certainly thinks it is unfair. Mahmood took to The Spectator, home to friend of British Muslims Rod Liddle to mount a defence of his role in boosting the hoax and the subsequent response from government and Birmingham council.

He precedes to whine about my tweet not all skinfolk are your kinfolk award (@ me next time big man) and decrying how British Muslims have started calling him and other Muslims Brown NeoCons.

Nowhere in that defence of the actions of Birmingham council and the government does he take into the consideration the mental health impact on Muslim school kids having to go to school under suspicion and fear of being reported to Prevent. Nor does he have anything to say on the worsening academic impact of Muslim school kids who go to the schools apparently saved from an Islamist plot to takeover schools they go to.

Yes Khalid Mahmood in my view is an unserious character who has spent his parliamentary career embroiled in scandals (Google it). He would rather give his brown face to legitimise the likes of Henry Jackson Society and Policy Exchange rather than stand up for his local constituents and co-religionists.

So what of the tribe of British journalists, pundits and opinion writers? Well they seem to be suffering from a collective condition that is best summed up as you haven’t listened to the podcast have you? Latest being Hadley Freeman over the weekend. Having sharpened her investigative journalism chops writing numerous in defence of Woody Allen articles she turned her attention to defending British journalism with all the hilarity of in her defence of Woody Allen articles.

So what next then for British Muslims what comes after the podcast and with the lack of journalistic interest how do we succeed?

It will take the entirety of British Muslim communities we can’t be exclusionary based on race, gender or sect. We have to mobilise all constituent parts that make up our diverse communities because the fallout from Trojan Hoax letter affects all our kids.

I don’t have all the answers on how to fightback on the securitisation of British Muslim society. However one thing is for certain, era of community leaders professing to speak on behalf of diverse communities should be over, because they have mostly been captured by the state and not only failed to represent Muslims but the only fight they’ve ever shown is for the last samosa when the local MP comes to the mosque during election time courting votes.

We need to progress the struggle on from listening to each other complain how hard done by we are. I’m not suggesting this isn’t revolutionary act, for a long time there has been a state sanction project to quell any dissent from British Muslims starting under Tony Blair in 2006 and accelerated under consecutive Tory governments to undermine and discredit those Muslims who spoke out against government policies such as Prevent and Channel and UK foreign policy when it comes to wars and selling arms.

If you have been involved in grassroots activism and have suggestions on how to organise on the ground in Birmingham or are able to offer legal advice to those personally affected by the fake Islamist plot then we need you.

If you’re organisation and not directly funded by Home Office or through government counter terrorism funding and are purporting to represent Muslims, what are you doing apart from strongly worded statement asking for an enquiry into Trojan Hoax? How is not ending Prevent not higher on the list of any Muslim organisation at this point?

If there is apathy or fear amongst British Muslims in exercising our democratic right as British citizens to protest and organise around asking for an independent enquiry into the Trojan hoax affair and subsequent handling how do we change that? We do need discussions Twitter spaces around Trojan Hoax have been useful but we also need Twitter spaces on how to organise.

We have already heard from the chaiwala from Perry Barr, but what of the other Muslim MPs? Have they raised questions in parliament over the revelations from the podcast? What are they doing in terms of organising with fellow Muslim Mps across all parties in demanding an enquiry and ending Prevent? If they believe in Prevent and the actions taken by Birmingham council and Conservative government during the panic created by the fake Islamist letter let them go on record and say so. Because silence on the matter at this point is complicity.

It is clear one of the biggest obstacles in getting justice is fellow Muslims what have Labour MPs like Shabana Mahmood who represents Ladywood said or done in relation to the revelations contained with the eight part podcast series? What about all the Muslim councillors in Birmingham councillors who attend your local mosques and rely on your votes at local elections? What is the point of APPGG on British Muslims if they’ve not said or done anything in relation to this? I’m sorry if you claim to represent British Muslims and your sole contribution has been a strongly worded statement then hope for the whole thing dies down because it puts you in an awkward position with the establishment then what is the point of you? Whole generation of school kids are going through schooling under the purview of security services. British Muslims don’t care about your place at the table being under threat.

The idealists amongst us thought journalists and commentators would pick up the baton from the multi year investigation by Hamza Syed and Brian Reed but nope apart from few notable exceptions in the UK most follow up has been done by American news publications and even then within the narrow context on why did British journalism fail to report this story accurately? Nothing much on the increased securitisation of Muslim school children through Prevent. Have any journalists for publications bothered to get in contact with teachers, governors and TA’s personally impacted by the fake letter?

Be clear this is a generational struggle and our esteemed fourth estate who are supposed to hold governments to account will instead be spending their time smearing Muslims instead because you see likes of Michael Gove are one of them and former columnist at The Times and us using our hands as knife and forks at dinnertime are not.