Teacher at U.K. Islamic school who exposed "apes & pigs" texts receives £70,000

[Ambiorix]

Teacher (Mr. Cook, so a convert!?) at U.K. Islamic school who exposed "apes and pigs" texts receives £70,000 settlement for unfair dismissal

An update on this story. "Teacher accuses Islamic school of racism," by Alexandra Frean for the Times Online:

A former teacher at an Islamic school, who alleged that it taught an offensive and racist view of non-Muslims, has been awarded £70,000 by an employment tribunal after winning his case for unfair dismissal.
Colin Cook told the tribunal in Watford that pupils were taught from Arabic books that likened Jews and Christians to “monkeys” and “pigs” at The King Fahad Academy, which is funded and run by the Saudi Arabian Government.
The tribunal ruled that Mr Cook, a British Muslim, was unfairly dismissed from his £36,000-a-year post at the school in Acton, West London, in December 2006 after blowing the whistle on systematic cheating at a GCSE exam.
The panel found that the school created a “smokescreen” to try to justify his dismissal after 18 years’ unblemished service.
It awarded Mr Cook £58,800 in compensation for loss of earnings and £10,500 for injury to feelings. But it rejected his claim that the school discriminated against him on racial grounds.
Mr Cook told the hearing that after leaving the school another member of staff gave him extracts from an Arabic textbook, which encouraged students to believe that all religions other than Islam were worthless.
The books referred to “the repugnant characteristics of the Jews”. Another passage said: “Those whom God has cursed and with whom he is angry, he has turned into monkeys and pigs. They worship Satan.”
Mr Cook alleged that the books were spreading race hatred. “They should not be brought into this country and they should not be used in this country,” he said.
The school denied ever teaching any form of racial hatred and insisted that the offending passages in the books were “misinterpreted” and were never used in class. But it later got rid of the books.



February 21, 2008

Muslim school 'that taught pupils from race hate textbooks made photocopies after order to shred them'
Of course, the school didn't teach "race hate" at all, but rather religious hate: "Jews" and "Christians" are not racial groups any more than "Muslims" is. But the British legal system cannot conceptualize such a thing.

And even more importantly, the British cannot dare to conceive of the possibility that this problem is deeper than just a matter of a few textbooks. The source of the identification of Jews and Christians with apes and pigs is the Qur'an itself:

Say: "O people of the Book! Do ye disapprove of us for no other reason than that we believe in Allah, and the revelation that hath come to us and that which came before (us), and (perhaps) that most of you are rebellious and disobedient?" Say: "Shall I point out to you something much worse than this, (as judged) by the treatment it received from Allah? Those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath, those of whom some He transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil; these are (many times) worse in rank, and far more astray from the even path!" (5:59-60)
The implication of this is that the People of the Book -- Jews and Christians -- by rejecting Muhammad, are risking the same kind of bestial transformation.

"Muslim school 'that taught pupils from race hate textbooks made photocopies after order to shred them,'" from the Daily Mail (thanks to all who sent this in):

A prestigious Islamic school in London was forced to shred 2,000 textbooks used to poison pupils' minds with lessons of hate, a former teacher claimed yesterday.
Colin Cook, who taught English at the King Fahad Academy for 18 years, told a tribunal how "incompetent" Ofsted inspectors reported that the school's teaching of Islamic studies was "mostly good".

But their report was wildly inaccurate, he said, because pupils as young as five were being taught by rote from Arabic textbooks describing Jews as "monkeys" and Christians as "pigs".

Mr Cook said that when he exposed the racist teaching, the school's head Dr Sumaya Alyusuf lied on television, insisting that hateful passages had never been taught.

Under public pressure the Academy eventually agreed to destroy 2,000 books but photocopied them first for future use, he told the tribunal.

The school, in Acton, West London, opened in 1985 for the children of Saudi diplomats and is funded and controlled by the Saudi government.

Its 1,250 pupils have included the five children of jailed claw-handed cleric Abu Hamza and those of Abu Qatada, who was said to be Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe....