The New York Times’ partisan reporting lets Islamic extremists off the hook

Anybody who has read The New York Times (NYT) recently knows the American newspaper of record has it in for Britain. Its correspondents describe us “cavorting in swamps” and surviving on a diet of “porridge and boiled mutton”. It reports that Brexit has ruined Easters and Christmases past and caused shortages of “candy”. Even the death of Queen Elizabeth prompted columns condemning the “repugnant royal demand for deference”.

It is tempting to simply laugh at the ignorance behind the absurdities, but the wilful distortion of reality matters. In recent weeks, the NYT has published stories attacking our criminal justice system. In one, it champions a convicted murderer, Giovanni Lawrence, and attacks the concept of “joint enterprise” – when more than one defendant can be found guilty of a crime – as racist. In another, it supports Ademola Adedeji, convicted of conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm with intent, because he did not take part in an attack he had helped to plan. That indeed is why he was convicted of conspiracy – as he would have been in the United States.

We can see why the NYT behaves like this. Like many American institutions, it has succumbed to critical race theories that claim Western societies are an organic conspiracy, systematically discriminating in favour of white people at the expense of minorities. It looks at the world only through its own cultural prism, projecting its neuroses and psychoses – especially about race – onto others. And, as it seeks subscriber income from overseas, it targets those sanctimonious and self-regarding liberals furious that their fellow citizens fall short of their elevated ideals.

All three factors were at play in the most egregious example yet of the NYT’s coverage of Britain: a podcast series produced in partnership with Serial about the Trojan Horse scandal, which was first exposed in 2014. The series sought to persuade listeners that the scandal was not that a group of hard-line Sunni Muslim activists had taken over state schools in Birmingham – as several official inquiries established – but an “Islamophobic” government plot to smear civic-minded Muslims and justify counter-terrorism laws.

There is only one problem with the series, and that is that those familiar with Trojan Horse condemn it as fiction. As a comprehensive new report by Policy Exchange makes clear, the NYT’s argument is a sham, and its “journalism” a travesty unworthy of the name.

We know this because Hamza Syed, one of the “journalists” behind the series, openly admits he knew the conclusions of his investigation before it began. “I never believed Tahir Alam was masterminding the sinister Islamic plot,” he says. “I never believed Birmingham City Council. I never believed Peter Clarke. I never believed Michael Gove … What I believe is, I’m going to change this narrative, inshallah.”

These are the words of an activist, not a credible journalist. And sure enough, activism trumps journalistic standards throughout the series. The portrayal of an interview with Richy Thompson, of Humanists UK, was exposed as dishonest when Thompson released his own recording of a conversation with Syed and his partner, Brian Reed. The NYT made only one correction to the podcast and refused to apologise.

Something similar happened to me. When I wrote a column in 2017 warning that the Trojan Horse plotters and their supporters planned a community meeting to label the scandal a hoax, a Telegraph reporter called the venue, which cancelled the event. Falsely, the series claimed I emailed the venue threatening to “associate [them] with extremists in the newspaper”. Absurdly, Syed and Reed admit they asked their source to show them the email, and that he refused to do so, but they repeated the lie anyway. Again, the NYT refused to apologise or correct the record.

Throughout, the series ignores facts inconvenient for its conspiracy theory. Tahir Alam, the Trojan Horse ringleader, remains banned from involvement in schools for life. Razwan Faraz lost his case for unfair dismissal in the courts, where a judge said he was “not a credible witness”. The findings of the inquiries are sped past or ignored altogether.

Ofsted found “an organised campaign to target certain schools in Birmingham in order to alter their character and ethos” with a “culture of fear and intimidation”. A hate preacher was invited to address students; an al-Qaeda terrorist was praised in assembly. Biology teachers rejected evolution as un-Islamic. Children were warned about “white prostitutes” and told “white teachers do not have your best interests at heart”. Loudspeakers were erected to broadcast the call to prayer.

The podcast presents Michael Gove, in 2014 the education secretary, as an “Islamophobic” pantomime villain. But the NYT fails to explain why this supposed Gove-led Tory plot against Muslims was supported by Ofsted, Peter Clarke and Ian Kershaw, who both produced independent reports, Lib Dem ministers, Labour-led Birmingham City Council, and a Trojan Horse Review Group established by the council which included Labour politicians, headteachers, the Bishop of Birmingham and a mosque representative.

There are obvious reasons why the Trojan Horse plotters and their allies want to overturn the facts of what happened in those Birmingham schools. Aided by partisan academics, useful idiots like those at the NYT and journalists writing for publications reportedly funded by Middle Eastern governments, the same old activist groups are determined to define normative Islam in a hard-line way, paint Britain as a hostile environment for Muslims, and win support for a legally defined and enforced definition of “Islamophobia” that will protect Islam and Islamist ideology from criticism.

This could scarcely be more important. For the battle between truth and falsehood over Trojan Horse is just one front in a wider battle as activists become more adept at playing the game and using our liberal values and rights-based laws against us. We must remain ever vigilant and, with Trojan Horse as with every other battle, we cannot surrender an inch to extremists.