Islam won yet another battle in its broader struggle to establish a virtual Muslim state inside Britain last week. The Daily Telegraphreports (January 31):

Private Muslim schools have been given the power to police themselves, despite widespread fears over religious segregation, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.In a controversial move, they have won the right to appoint their own Ofsted-style inspectors. A new independent watchdog has been set up to be more “sensitive'’ toward Islamic education. …Under present legislation, most state and private schools are inspected by Ofsted, the government’s standards watchdog. The Association of Muslim Schools and the Christian Schools’ Trust applied to the government to set up a separate inspectorate for a small number of private faith schools.The Daily Telegraph has learned the Department for Children, Schools and Families (dcsf) approved plans for the Bridge Schools’ Inspectorate last week, giving it the power to inspect about 60 private Muslim schools and 50 Christian schools.

The decision is not without opposition. The Daily Telegraph continued:

Baroness Massey, the Labor peer, said any decision to set up separate inspection bodies would “reinforce differences and divisions” between religious groups. Last night Mr. Sheerman described the move as “very worrying.” Michael Gove, the shadow children’s secretary, said the Tories supported faith schools for parents who want them. “It’s important, however, to ensure that we build a society which is cohesive and make a success of diverse Britain.”

Many fear that the new legislation will serve to legitimize the political and judicial Muslim imprint in Britain, and intensify the separation of Muslims from the broader British community. Others, such as Melanie Phillips, an astute critic of the growing Islamic tide in Britain, argue that Muslim schools deserve to be monitored more by the British government, not less:

It really is hard to believe this. There is a crying need for much more rigorous state inspection of Muslim schools. Ofsted, which is supposedly going to police this new Muslim/Christian inspectorate, is hopeless; having progressively emasculated its inspection processes generally, it has already failed to identify Islamic extremism in the Muslims schools it inspects …. The only way to address Islamic extremism is to take the toughest line possible against the dissemination of hatred and incitement. … To withdraw instead, as the government is now doing, and allow these schools to police themselves is to give a green light to the extremist production line.Furthermore, it also bows to the Islamist insistence that British Muslims must develop parallel institutions to the British state, a fundamental element of their strategy to Islamize this country. For although this is presented as a Muslim/Christian initiative, no one can be in any doubt that the main thrust comes from British Muslims.

Phillips concludes:

Many people still think that the idea that Britain could ever be “Islamized” is just too preposterous and silly to be taken seriously. It is not. It is well advanced. What it relies upon is three things: the refusal of the British public to take it seriously; the Islamists’ ability to manipulate moral and intellectual liberal confusion and the resulting paralysis over “Islamophobia,” “discrimination” and “minority rights”; and the craven desire by the British government to buy off the implicit and explicit threats of Muslim social unrest and yet more terrorist attacks by giving in to the Islamists’ demands.

Phillips’s points are valid. But there is much more to this issue than these adroit perceptions. For more information, read “The Sickness in Britain’s Heart.”