Another headteacher has claimed there’s a “Trojan Horse-style plot” at an Oldham school with Muslim governors.
The Trojan Horse plot refers to an organised attempt to introduce an Islamist ethos into several state schools in Birmingham three years ago.
Rick Hodge has said he also suffered a “campaign of harassment” by the school’s Muslim co-founder.
Hodge, who was due to be the principal of the Phoenix Free School in Oldham, told The Sunday Times that he suffered a “campaign of harassment” at the hands of Affan Burki, a former British Army Officer.
The paper reported that nearly all of the school’s governors were Muslim, despite the intake being aimed at an even split between white and Asian pupils.
Hodge, a former pilot, claimed there was a row over the dress code set for women staff at the school.
He said another man connected with the school “went completely off on one about how not wearing a hijab would effectively turn all Muslim women into whores”.
Burki denied any bullying of Hodge and said the claims about the hijab row were concocted.
The row comes a week after Trish O’Donnell, head of Clarksfield Primary School in Oldham, said she received death threats and “harassment and intimidation” from Muslim parents pushing an ultra-conservative religious agenda.
According to the paper, divisions in the local Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are also intense. Arooj Shah, a rising star in the local Labour Party, said she had endured years of harassment from a “minority of venomous Asian men” after being elected to the council in 2012.
Shah said that influential local Pakistani Labour members spread damaging rumours about her, any male councillor who supported her was said to be her lover and a picture of a nude model with her head superimposed on it was posted to her.
Shah eventually lost her seat in last May’s elections.
