Here's Looking At You, Kids: Orthodox Jewish schools (& many Muslim ones) reportedly under scrutiny for un-British values

This is London

The London Daily Telegraph informs us, regarding a secret Department of Education memo leaked to it on extremism in  faith schools, that 'there are concerns about 118 "socially conservative" independent faith schools – the vast majority of them Muslim – where pupils may be encouraged to cut themselves off from mainstream society.'

Reveals the newspaper:

'.... Among “schools of interest” are three run by the Islamic Shaksiyah Foundation in Haringey, North London and Slough, Berks. Reports have claimed the foundation is run by senior members and activists of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist political group that campaigns for an Islamic state.... Another school, the Alif Academy in Forest Gate, East London, is also on the list. The local council has raised concerns about links with Hizb ut-Tahrir....

Another causing concern is the Darul Uloom school in Birmingham, associated with the missionary group Tablighi Jamaat, where an undercover documentary recorded children being taught a hardline version of Islam that criticised Hindus and Jews....

 The document also mentions a proposal to set up a school attached to the Central Mosque in Rochdale, called Darul Ilm, which is also associated with Tablighi Jamaat....

 The briefing document also highlights an application to set up a private school at the Green Lanes Mosque in Birmingham, which has links to fundamentalist “salafi” Muslims in Pakistan, and where another undercover documentary filmed preachers speaking out against homosexuals and non-Muslims.'

Yes, that' s life in the dear old Motherland today.

But, we are also informed, certain Jewish and Christian schools are also under scrutiny:

'To add to the problems the education department faces, included in the list of  "socially conservative" schools also those run by Orthodox Jews and the fundamentalist Christian sect the Plymouth Brethren.'

During my youth I worked with a woman, close to retirement age, who was a member of one of the Brethren sects.   She had a responsible position in a major academic institution but seemed somewhat forbidding.  She did not smile, wore her white hair very long, held back by a black alice band, and wore singularly unstylish clothes.  During lunchtime on my first day at work, in the canteen, I noticed her sitting alone at the end of one of the long refectory-style tables, having her meal while reading a book.  Thinking she'd welcome company, and would prove warm and helpful to a colleague who'd only just joined the staff, I sat opposite her.

Big mistake.  She looked absolutely aghast at my presence, said not one word of greeting, and buried her head deeper into her reading material, which proved to be the Bible.

That afternoon, I mentioned the snub to a couple of colleagues.  "What on earth have I done to offend her?" I asked.  "Nothing," they laughed.  "She's like that to everyone.  She only talks to us about work matters, but otherwise is strictly aloof, since we're not in the Brethren and represent a corrupting influence."

This too is London

Definitely "socially conservative," irritatingly unsociable, yet, like the strictly observant Jews whose educational system is also reportedly under scrutiny, not a threat to anyone else, not intent on preaching hatred against those of other faiths or none, or causing them  physical harm or converting them to her way of life.

Paul Weston, the urbane leader of the British Freedom Party, an avowedly centrist non-racist party that campaigns against mass immigration and membership of the EU, warning not so long ago of the rapid demographic and cultural change that Tony Blair's grotesque Open Door immigration policy wrought and is still wreaking on British society, remarked:

'We have 250,000 Jews in Britain. I mean it's a very small proportion of the population. When you read the newspapers every week, you never see stories about violent Jewish gangs dealing in drugs, or Jewish gangs stabbing Pakistani gangs. You know, the Jews in Britain have integrated utterly. They were very poor, and they've risen mostly to the middle class now. They get on with their lives. They get on with their jobs. They pay their taxes and they're wonderful people.... The rise of antisemitism in the UK comes from Islam. We now have Shariah enforced no-go zones in various parts of the country, and they actually say "no Jews allowed." No homosexuals, no alcohol, no Jews.... What do [should] we do about it? We [should] prosecute imams in the mosques who are calling for the murder of Jews. We [should]close down the mosques that are doing this. We should go all out to make sure that if these Muslims want to live in our country, they accept the Jews in exactly the same way that the native British have accepted Jews....

.... The aggression, violence and desire for a global Caliphate that is being instilled in the minds of our growing Muslim community in England signals the likelihood of possible Civil War before 2050. For me the most important thing is that we do not get dragged into a horrific Civil War similar to that of Lebanon – the Civil War in Lebanon – and the breakup of Yugoslavia which of course fractured on racial, religious and tribal lines. I would also like to see our children educated properly as they used to be back in the 1950's and 1960's. I would like to see morality re-introduced, because what they [the left] did in Britain was undermine religion and come up with moral relativism, which said there is no such thing as morality.

Now, if you take away religion and its guiding moral principles, and you declare morality to be null and void as well, you end up with what we get in British towns and cities every Friday night. This out of control, decadent group of young people who have no conception of honor and decency, of patriotism, civility and appropriate behavior. It is quite awful. We are the worst country in Europe for this. It is like hell on a Friday and Saturday night. People are frightened to go into town centers. I see the basically good British people betrayed. Now the young have been betrayed. It is not their fault that they are like this. They have been essentially raised to be like this. I would like to completely reverse that. I would like to see morality reintroduced. Now, I'm not going to say I want to see Christianity rammed down everyone's throats. I just want to see the morality of Judeo-Christian values re-introduced ...'. 

I hold no brief for Weston's party, and I do not know whether or not it adheres to its avowedly non-racist agenda.  But, at a time when leftists and atheists are gunning for faith schools (is it mere coincidence that the odious Israel-demonising Guardian chose an image of Jewish schoolchildren to illustrate the article here?) a lot of what he says there seems reasonable to me.