On his Facebook page, Inam Ul Haq Anwar doesn’t call himself a senior teacher at Park View School, which is a large secondary in the multi-cultural Small Heath area that’s just east of Birmingham city centre.

Instead, the heavily-bearded head of department describes his profession much more grandly — as an ‘architect  of minds’.

If you were to spend a few minutes, as I have, browsing his Facebook profile, you would get a very clear idea of what motivates him to fulfil this remit.

Like most of the 600-plus pupils he teaches, Anwar is Muslim.

Deeply religious, he posts regular comments about Islamic practices and protocols, points readers to website articles supportive of Islam, and often quotes from the Koran.

He also appears to be highly political. In recent weeks, Anwar has condemned incursions by Israel into Arab-controlled Gaza (which he describes as ‘our Holocaust’), criticised U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan and made pointed attacks on Ukip’s ‘retard’ leader Nigel Farage.

On another occasion, he strayed into yet more contentious territory: posting two outspoken messages voicing support for an individual who was appearing in court charged with  terror offences.

‘We need everyone to make dua [pray] that [the alleged terrorist] is released and that Allah Almighty alleviates him from this suffering,’ read one, posted on the eve of the hearing.

The following day, after a court ruling, Anwar commented: ‘Know this was not the Judge’s decision, nor the corrupt Establishment’s. Or anyone else’s for that matter. This was Allah jalla wa’ala’s decision.’

He then posted a lengthy quote from the Koran, advising: ‘No matter how great the setback, the struggle between truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, must continue.’

This wasn’t the first time that this teacher, or ‘architect of minds’, had voiced support for an alleged  Islamic extremist. Just before Christmas, he took to Facebook to celebrate the ‘great news’ that a bookshop owner from Birmingham nicknamed ‘Abu Bakr’ was to be released early from prison.

‘May Allah make it easy for  all those that have been wrongly imprisoned. Ameen!’ he declared.

Abu Bakr, whose real name is Ahmed Faraz, has been frequently described as ‘the terrorists’ favourite bookseller,’ because of the extremist literature his store sells, and the fact its customers have included the leaders of the 7/7 London bomb plot.

He was jailed in 2011 after being convicted of 11 counts of possessing and disseminating terrorist publications. However, he was released last year after winning an appeal on a legal technicality — the development Anwar was applauding.

All of which begs a simple question: should a teacher charged with shaping the minds of 600 impressionable Muslim schoolchildren be publicly supporting alleged extremists?

‘Certainly not,’ says Saif Rahman, of the centrist Humanist and Cultural Muslim Association.

‘These are the words of a firebrand. Looking at this guy’s Facebook feed, it rings alarm bells. If he’s saying stuff like this in public, one can only imagine what he’s saying to the kids he teaches in private.’

Indeed one can. But Anwar’s comments are all the more disturbing because his place of work, Park View School, is currently at the centre of the hugely contentious ‘Trojan Horse’ affair.

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Filled with endless pictures of smiling children, the ‘information and guidance’ booklet must have looked anodyne when it tumbled off the press a few years ago.

It was produced by the Muslim Council of Britain and contained — in the words of the foreword — 72 pages of advice to schools designed to ‘promote greater understanding of the faith, religious and cultural needs’ of pupils from an Islamic background.

Even the title seemed, on the face of things, uncontroversial. It was called simply: Meeting The Needs Of Muslim Pupils In State Schools.

Appearances can be deceptive, though. For within days of its publication, this outwardly unremarkable booklet had sparked an explosive political controversy.

For, in the eyes of a host of vociferous critics, it amounted to nothing less than a blueprint for the ‘Islamicisation’ of Britain’s entire education system.

To that end, it called for sweeping changes in the way everything from music, art and sports, to biology and religious education were taught in schools.

One passage endorsed a ban on ‘unIslamic’ activities, such as dancing, for Muslim pupils.

Another said swimming lessons should be halted during Ramadan, because ‘the potential for swallowing water [when fasting] is very high’. A third, regarding behavioural codes, declared that ‘girlfriend/boyfriend as well as homosexual relationships’ are ‘not acceptable practices according to Islamic teachings’.

The booklet issued hawkish decrees on everything from architecture — it called for single-sex prayer rooms to be built at every school — to extra-curricular activities. School balls, discos  and fashion shows should be avoided so as not to ‘inadvertently exclude’ Muslim parents and pupils, it cautioned.

So, too, should fund-raising raffles, since gambling is forbidden by the Koran, Islam’s holy book.

At meal-times, meanwhile, it said children should be offered halal food, sourced from animals killed without first being stunned — the most ‘pure’ form of religious slaughter, dubbed cruel by animal welfare campaigners.

During biology lessons, many aspects of sex education, including teaching about contraception and the use of diagrams showing reproductive organs, would be regarded by Muslims as ‘completely inappropriate and encouraging morally unacceptable behaviour’.

In drama, Nativity plays were off-limits for Muslim pupils, while ‘parents may have reservations regarding participation in [any] theatrical plays or acting that involves physical contact between males and females’.

Art teachers, it added, ‘should avoid encouraging Muslim pupils from producing three-dimensional imagery of humans’, since that is also outlawed by the Koran.

‘Some Muslims may hold a very conservative attitude towards music and may seek to avoid it altogether,’ read a passage on music lessons.

‘Most Muslim parents will find little or no educational merit or value in dance or dancing after early childhood and may even find it objectionable.’ As for PE, the booklet said Muslim girls should wear full-length tracksuits and headscarves when taking part in even highly vigorous exercise, while teachers must avoid the ‘objectionable’ practice of allowing mixed-gender groups to play contact sports such as football or basketball.

Mixed-gender swimming sessions, even for primary school children, were ‘unacceptable for reasons of modesty and decency to Muslim parents’.

Finally, the booklet argued that all British children should have the option of studying Arabic, while staff should consider segregating morning assembly, with ‘separate acts of collective worship’ for Muslim and Christian  students.

If you think some of that advice sounds divisive and extreme, not to say at odds with traditionally British educational values, you are not alone. For the contents of Meeting The Needs Of Muslim Pupils In State Schools sparked immediate controversy.

In the days after its publication in February 2007, front-page newspaper reports savaged its ‘Taliban-style’ decrees. Several MPs and pressure groups attacked the booklet — which ended up being pulled from the Muslim Council of Britain’s (MCB) website — as dangerous and divisive.

‘The MCB needs to realise it has to move closer to the rest of the community, not away from it,’ said the Conservative MP Greg Hands, who is now a Government whip.

The National Secular Society dubbed the report ‘a recipe for disaster’. And the moderate Sufi Muslim Council, which claims to represent more Muslims than the MCB, said it had misunderstood the nature of Ramadan.

Lost in the noise, however, was the identity of the author behind this report. Perhaps surprisingly, he was neither named nor quoted  in any of the mainstream coverage that followed its publication.

Today, however, this individual — and his apparently-conservative beliefs — seems very relevant indeed.

He is crucial, in fact, to fully understanding a different, but no less chilling scandal that has in recent months raised another pressing set of questions about the relationship between Islam and the state education system.

The man in question is called Tahir Mahmo Alam. He is 45 years old, lives in Birmingham and intriguingly (given the conservative views espoused above) he happens to be the central figure in the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ affair.

The story broke two months ago when a strange but shocking letter was leaked to newspapers.

Typed in italics and apparently unsigned and undated, it described a five-step strategy that Muslim extremists have supposedly been using to take over the running of a string of primary and secondary schools.

Their alleged ‘jihad’ was designed to ‘drip-feed our ideal for a Muslim school’ and went by the name Operation Trojan Horse.

It involved identifying target schools in predominately Muslim areas, getting sympathetic parents to join governing bodies and then using underhand methods to remove non-Muslim teachers from positions of influence.

After that, the curriculums, time-tables and cultures of the schools would be quietly altered to adhere to an Islamic ideal.

Alam, a governor of five schools in Birmingham, had supposedly ‘fine-tuned the Trojan Horse so it is totally invisible to the naked eye’, the letter said, allowing it to be quietly enacted across the city.

The plot would therefore spread to Bradford and Manchester, the letter continued, where Westernised teachers are ‘corrupting children with sex education, teaching about homosexuals, making children say Christian prayers and mixed swimming and sports’.

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EASTER eggs and bunnies were seized at a school at the centre of a takeover plot by Islamic hardliners, it was claimed yesterday.

A mother of a pupil alleges ­“morality squads” of older boys ­confiscated chocolate and toys from younger children.

The woman, who asked not be named for fear of reprisals, told the Daily Express: “Older boys are going round in these morality squads telling off girls if they do not wear veils.

“They bully the girls and stop them mingling with boys in the playground.”

And she said gangs have clamped down on Easter celebrations. She said: “My daughter tried to bring in an Easter egg for a friend and one boy grabbed it and smashed it against a wall.

“Another girl of about 11 brought in a little Easter bunny toy that she wanted to show her friends. They grabbed that off her too.

“All talk of Christmas and other non-Muslim festivals is banned. The teachers just turn a blind eye to it.”

Park View School is at the centre of an inquiry into a “Trojan Horse” plot to “Islamise” secular state schools in Birmingham. A leaked report this weekend claims Ofsted is to place six schools, including Park View, on “special measures”.

The report into Park View and its sister primary schools, Golden Hillock and Nansen, claims boys and girls are being illegally segregated.

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