After the Jason Arday disaster, here is new evidence that things have gone deeply wrong at Cambridge University.
We can reveal that a former supporter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, now banned as a terror group, has been appointed assistant research professor of education at Cambridge, in the same faculty as Arday.
Farah Ahmed has explicitly attacked “western education” as a “threat” to Muslims, condemned democracy and integration, and criticized British schools for teaching pupils that child marriage is wrong. During her time at Cambridge, she has written that the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to “gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications.”
These statements are part of her long record of bigoted, extremist and separatist views on education. In a Hizb ut-Tahrir pamphlet, “Education and Identity,” originally written in 2002, republished in 2017, and obtained by The Spectator, Ahmed writes that “the Muslim community as a whole in Britain needs to recognize that western education is a threat to our beliefs and values.”
She attacks schools’ “attempts to integrate Muslim children” as seeking to “produce new generations that reject Islam… if society is built on kufr [unbelief], it is our duty to tackle this challenge as a community in order to protect our young from its corruption.”
Ahmed is now responsible for postgraduate research in education at Britain’s top university, and for teaching undergraduate students, the future leaders of the profession, “how education shapes individuals and society.”
In her chapter in the 2002 pamphlet, Ahmed criticizes the national curriculum as a form of “systematic indoctrination” to “build ‘model British citizens’ who will seek to actively take part in the implementation of the secular capitalist system in British society. Naturally, such a system will not be suitable to the needs of Muslim students as the aqeedah [belief system] of the Muslim is in complete contradiction to this.”
She attacks British schools for teaching that “polygamy or marriage under the age of 16” is “archaic and discriminatory to women”, and for telling children that “democracy… is the only way that laws should be created.” Democracy, she says, is a “corrupt tradition,” where if “decision makers decide to make bombing Iraq or homosexuality legal, as they currently have, there is nothing anyone can do about it.”
Worst of all, “religious tolerance is primarily pushed in religious education,” meaning that “Islam is taught as a religion like any other, putting its value on the same level as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and the like.”
Nor does academic study escape Ahmed’s censure. English, she writes, “is one of the most damaging subjects” a school can teach. Fairy tales “reflect secular and immoral beliefs, which contradict the viewpoint of Islam.” Romeo and Juliet “advocates disobeying parents and pre-marital relations.”
Science is a problem too, because in the “teaching of evolution, Muslim children will be exposed to ideas that contradict Islam.” And in any subject, boys and girls may be asked to work together. “As Muslim parents we try to protect our children from the rubbish that western society encourages,” but interaction with non-Muslim children in the playground, which is “full of the competitiveness and individualism that western culture encourages… molds their personalities away from Islam.” As she puts it: “western culture is playground culture.”
Ahmed first came to public attention in 2009, when I exposed the fact that she was running two private primary schools, and getting more than £100,000 in public money to do so. At least three of the four trustees of the schools were Hizb ut-Tahrir members or activists, including the wife of Hizb’s then-leader, and the schools’ curriculum closely matched key tenets of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s separatist, anti-democratic ideology. (Hizb was still legal then, but was banned as a terror organization in 2024.)
The story caused a political row, but predictably enough the then schools secretary Ed Balls, the Charity Commission and Ofsted did absolutely nothing. Ahmed went on TV, presenting herself as a poster girl for Muslim persecution, though coyly refusing to answer when asked if she had ever been a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The two schools, in Haringey and Slough, continue to receive public funding (£382,000 last year) and Ahmed is still a trustee of the body which runs them. Now, however, she has rather clearly moved up in the world.
Could the assistant professor perhaps have mended her ways since the publication of her pamphlet? Could she now have embraced the values of the corrupt society which pays her wages? Well, the agenda at Cambridge is a bit more subtly expressed, but you needn’t look far to be deeply worried.
As well as being an assistant professor at the university itself, Ahmed is director of something called the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), part of Camtree, the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange. Camtree is a center at Hughes Hall, the Cambridge University college where Ahmed is a research fellow and member of the governing body. In summer 2023, IELC, Camtree and Cambridge University ran a conference on Islam, science and education to “recognize the role of science as part of a wider modernist and colonial project,” and to “consider challenges” to the view that “sees science as ‘objective knowledge’.” Ahmed was one of the organizers.
In December 2023, Ahmed and Cambridge University also organized a conference to “unlearn conventional teacher education and move toward Islamically grounded teacher development.” This attacked the “secular, neoliberal system of education” as “anti-metaphysical,” and said that teachers “need to re-center our focus on preparing the Muslim learner for the akhira,” everlasting life after death.
Another Ahmed production, of which she is co-author, a “How Islamic is my school” toolkit, says the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to “gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications.”
IELC’s website promotes (though claims it does not endorse) a site called “Salafi Homeschool.” This attacks the fact that “many Muslims openly participate” in celebrating Christmas and warns that “repeated exposure [to non-Muslim festivals] can lead to normalization. Without clear teaching, children may begin to associate happiness, generosity, and togetherness with non-Islamic celebrations instead of the occasions Allah has chosen for this ummah.”
I predict the authorities will do absolutely nothing
“Whether it is ‘just a roast,’ ‘just a birthday cake,’ or ‘just presents for the children,’ these actions blur the clear boundaries of the deen,” it continues.
Salafi Homeschool also warns that by going to state schools Muslim pupils may be asked to “sing songs with messages that conflict with Islamic values,” or “join activities like mixed-gender dancing.”
Ahmed did not respond to a request for comment before publication but has previously distanced herself from Hizb ut-Tahrir, saying in 2010 (before the pamphlet was more recently republished) that she had not been a member for a few years and does not agree with all its views as a political organisation.
If gaining qualifications in literacy is wrong, if scientific truth is a colonial construct, and if celebrating Christmas is forbidden, we really are almost back to the world of Ahmed’s old Hizb pamphlet, where English is dangerous, fairy tales are evil and biology is blasphemy.
Only this time, dressed up in slightly prissier language for a gullible academic audience, it is happening at the heart of the British educational establishment. Once again, I predict, the authorities will do absolutely nothing, ignoring all the evidence outlined in this article. The case of assistant professor Farah Ahmed will become the latest exhibit in the gradual suicide of Britain and the West.
When Ahmed says that British society is corrupt, her appointment to this job proves she is surely right.
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