Maajid's New National Hero In Combating Islamist Extremism - The Chief Of Ofsted

16 December 2017, 15:46 | Updated: 16 December 2017, 15:52

The head of Ofsted has received threats and abuse after accusing religiously conservative private faith schools of resisting British values.

British values and equalities law are being "deliberately resisted" by religious conservatives running private faith schools, the chief inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman, has said.

Maajid Nawaz said the issue was one of the most significant roadblocks to integration and Spielman's opposition to it makes her our latest national hero.

"Who would've thought that a chief inspector of schools would have more backbone in tackling one of our biggest social cohesion challenges?" the LBC presenter asked.

Not the Prime Minister, not a public intellectual, not a modern day reincarnation of George Orwell (which Maajid admitted to privately fantasising about "all the time") but the head of Ofsted.

The inspection boss has said she had received some "pretty venomous stuff" in "nasty tweets" and threatening emails from a "mixture of Islamic extremists and the hard left," she believed.

Maajid's own opposition to forcing children to wear head scarves is well known, "let children be children," rather than imposing modesty and sexualisation upon them, but he also applauded Spielman's efforts to uphold equality on behalf of the nation.

Since starting her job in January the boss has won an appeal against the Al-Hijrah school to end segregation in a joint boy-girl school, which Maajid called "the poison of fundamentalist religion."

He said: "Very brave of her it is, I think the nation deserves to know what she's doing and I think she deserves more recognition for what she's doing.

"Because she is sticking her neck out and being threatened by Islamist extremists for attempting to reform the way in which unregistered schools, ultra-conservative religious seminaries, are run in this country.

"As the chief inspector of schools, guess what? it's her job.

"And for trying to do her job she has been receiving threatening correspondence, Islamists telling her they know were she lives and her inspectors have been facing harassment while they've been out doing their jobs, by these fundamentalists in these schools."

Watch the clip above.