Police are investigating allegations that abusive messages were sent to the head teacher of an east London primary school embroiled in a row about banning the hijab and to its chairman of governors.
A complaint has been filed with police in Newham about emails, Facebook posts and other social media messages received by both Neena Lall, head teacher at St Stephen’s School in East Ham and Arif Qawi, the former chairman of governors.
.... Qawi said he received a flurry of online messages the day after The Sunday Times published an article and film about the school last month which mentioned its decision to ban the hijab for young girls at the school.
Yunus Dudhwala, a local imam, shared Qawi’s Facebook post of the article and invited people to comment online.
Some of the messages that followed were abusive. One described Qawi as a “coconut”, another claimed that he was Islamophobic and a third called him an “imbecile”.
One poster publicly listed Qawi’s personal email address and urged people to email him and also the head teacher.
Qawi said that a campaign of messages, some abusive, over several days had forced the school to reverse its hijab ban. He himself resigned “because I did not agree with reversing the hijab ban and to protect the head teacher. She was told that if I left the campaign would stop.” [The Times (£)] Read more
