Michael Gove book offers clue to Trojan horse row and his views on Islamism

Whether coincidence or conspiracy, it is a surprise to discover that a key chapter in Michael Gove's 2006 polemical book on the threat of Islamism to Britain, Celsius 7/7, is entitled The Trojan Horse.

"Nowhere has moral clarity been more lacking in British state policy over the last ten to fifteen years than in our approach to the Islamist threat," begins chapter eight, before detailing his belief that "a sizeable minority" of Britain's 1.8 million Muslims hold "rejectionist Islamist views" which he compares to the threat posed by Nazism and Communism.

It may well be that his chapter heading, foreshadowing the Trojan horse references in the suspected hoax letters alleging an Islamist plot to take over schools in Birmingham, is just a familiar literary trope. But Celsius 7/7, published in the aftermath of the London tube and bus bombings, does provide some clues to Gove's political outlook.

He says he wrote the book because of a "widespread reluctance to acknowledge the real scale and nature of the Islamist terror threat" in Britain and "the failure to scrutinise, monitor or check the actions, funding and operation of those committed to spreading the Islamist word in Britain".

The views expressed in the book may of course have changed over the past seven years. But the education secretary appears to be a man of consistent political principle and has long subscribed to the "Londonistan" claims of rightwing commentators such as Melanie Phillips and others

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/06/michael-gove-trojan-horse-islam


This is also interesting:


http://www.goldenhillock.bham.sch.uk/images/LATEST_NEWS/PVET%20Statement%20on%20GHS%205th%20June%202014.pdf

The denialist guardian.....