As the new term starts, and a court case looms, teachers, parents and demonstrators at Birmingham’s Anderton Park primary tell their side of the story

“People of quality respect equality,” says Aisha, shyly sticking rainbow feathers on to the peace posters she’s just made. The teenager is one of half a dozen Muslim pupils from South and City College Birmingham attending a creative workshop promoting LGBTQ rights in the city.

They are joined by Muslim girls and women, mothers, students and refugees, who have crammed into the Ort gallery to meet and collaborate with members of the local Muslim LGBTQ community. A two-year-old careers between the tables, which are scattered with paint pens, rainbow paper and pots of glue. One mother in a niqab who homeschools her three children tells me she’s here to make sure they understand “how to respect other people who might be different”. Another, a migrant from Iraq, listens carefully to the experience of Mayzar Shirali, who runs a Persian LGBT asylum and refugee support network, and is hoping today is “an icebreaker”.

“We’re here to stop the spreading of hate,” explains Salma Zulfiqar, who has organised today’s ArtConnects event. “And to show we can live together in peace.”

But tensions have been running high in this inner-city neighbourhood, known locally as the “Balti triangle”, where Anderton Park primary school has suffered months of hostile protesting against the school’s LGBTQ-inclusive teaching. Interrupted only by the summer holidays and a temporary high court injunction moving the drama away from the school gates, demonstrators have been preparing to rally again on Friday, two weeks before the case goes back to court. At the centre of all of it is Shakeel Afsar, a 32-year-old property developer. He doesn’t have children at the school, but says he is the spokesperson for parents, including his sister Rosina.

In a school where about 90% of the pupils are Muslim, predominantly from families with Mirpur heritage, the teachers have a difficult balancing act: how to respect the values of its parents, who come from what has been known as one of the most rural and conservative cultures in Pakistan, while preparing the children properly for modern life in Britain.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Parents protest outside the school. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA

At nearby Parkfield School, where the protests first began in March, a decision was made to suspend its “No Outsiders” programme, an LGBTQ-inclusive scheme drawn up by assistant head Andrew Moffat, and reinstated over the summer term after months of consultation. But Anderton Park, which has been described as “a leading light in Birmingham for its equalities work” by the local authority, is not prepared to capitulate to what its head Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson calls “demands led by misinformation, deliberately misleading and intimidating parents, teachers and children.” Afsar says his supporters “are the majority of parents at [Anderton Park] who weren’t consulted by Hewitt-Clarkson about her LGBTQ agenda, and are upset that they’re being ignored. Their four-year-old kids are coming home confused asking about two mummies and two daddies, and boys being girls and girls being boys. That’s too young,” he insists. “It’s wrong.”

From the bright pastel warmth of her office, Hewitt-Clarkson clarifies what she has been telling parents since the beginning of the year: The school isn’t teaching the children about sex, gay sex, or gender reassignment. “What we do have are books that might show a child with two mums or two dads, black families, Muslim families, white families – stories that show children the representation of all families,” she says, exasperated. “It isn’t an ‘LGBT programme’ … in 700 hours of staff training in my 13 years here, we’ve done two hours of meetings on LGBT equality, and they say I am obsessed. That I am teaching children how to be gay.”

It isn’t an 'LGBT programme'. What we have are books … with a representation of all families Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, head teacher

At the school gates, the picture seems mixed: parents are growing wary of talking to journalists. Some worry that their children will lose religious values taught at home. Others are growing dubious of Afsar and want the whole issue resolved. “Everyone should respect everyone,” says a mother who gives her name as Nafisa. “But how can children understand what is halal [permitted] and what is haram [forbidden] as Muslims when they are told this at school and that at home?”

Afsar’s critics call him “a failed YouTuber”, and say he is intent on creating a circus around “The Shakeel Show” – for notoriety, to launch a political career. His GoFundMe page, which crowd-sourced almost £10,000 within a week to mount a legal case against the school before being closed down, had him bombarded with questions about his motives online, while a picture of him at home during Ramadan, bizarrely posing with Katie Hopkins, a right-wing commentator, soured some of the momentum behind him.

“It isn’t about the kids any more,” says Saima Razzaq, a local Muslim activist who describes herself as “queer”. “It’s about Shakeel’s ego. I think he’s a pawn – there are other figures involved in these protests who are trying to whip up this same hostility up and down the country.”

Seated behind his desk amid a clutter of files, boxes and a wall map of Kashmir, Afsar scoffs. “Listen, I have no interest in becoming a politician, or standing. This isn’t about my career – I am a very successful businessman – I’m just here fighting for parental rights.”

An hour later he giggles and asks me: “Do you think I should become an MP? I think I’ll do it, you know. I swear to God, maybe I’ll stand when Roger Godsiff [the constituency MP] resigns. Have I got your vote?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shakeel Afsar, centre, says he speaks for the parents. Photograph: Jacob King/PA

Afsar denies being homophobic. “I have no issue with LGBT people and what they do – they should be able to thrive in this country. I’m not an extremist or a mad man, I’m not saying bring Sharia law here, we are a democratic country. In a democracy, LGBT people have the right to do what they want, and I have the right not to agree with it. I don’t discriminate or want any harm to them. Just because I think a gay relationship is not a valid moral relationship does not mean I am homophobic.”

Despite his persistently circular logic and frequent contradictions, such is Afsar’s inexplicable charm that even Razzaq and gay Muslim campaigner Khakan Qureshi seem to bear little real animosity towards him. “He has whipped up a hateful frenzy,” says Qureshi, who is a social worker in Birmingham and repeatedly comes up against Afsar on social and broadcast media. “And it’s damaging for both of my communities ... but he has the gift of the gab.”

Qureshi grimaces. “This is made out to be a Muslim v gay issue when, actually, this prejudice and fear exists all over England. No one talks about how class or socioeconomics affect these attitudes.”

In May, the outgoing head of Stonewall, Ruth Hunt agreed. “It’s not a religiously motivated battle,” she told the Observer. Her experience was that working with schools across the country on LGBT-inclusive education was often difficult, sensitive work. “This necessity to take things down to its lowest common denominator dominates all discourse now, and it’s just deeply annoying,” she said.

It’s a nuance that Razzaq – who represents Supporting Education of Equality and Diversity in Schools (Seeds), a 1,000-member network that has been set up by teachers as a result of the Birmingham school protests – says is consistently missing from the debate. She grew up in the same area as Afsar and finds it “deeply upsetting” to be at the intersection of two purportedly conflicting communities.

“But the answers have to come from within our community,” she says. “It has to be done sensitively, and we have to have those conversations as Muslims, British Pakistanis, as people from Birmingham. It can’t be done through the white saviours who are holding counter-protests at the school. That’s not helping, it reeks of a colonial mindset to me. Did they not think how that looks?”

Stephen Brown, regional organiser for the Musicians’ Union, is among the dozen people singing peace songs in the protest exclusion zone near Anderton Park’s school. The group haven’t engaged with any of the passing parents, he says, “but you have to start somewhere. The message of the songs is about bringing people together and supporting inclusivity.”

Meanwhile, outside the school gates, a Pakistani couple who don’t want to give their names, sigh and roll their eyes when asked about Afsar. “The Pakistani community back home always looks for leaders, so this is why he thinks he is shahenshah [a king] now,” says the father. “But we are not interested. The teachers are good. School is good. No, we don’t want our children taught these things and confused at a little age, but we have no choice.”

By 2020, every school will be mandated to update its relationship and sex education (RSE) lessons. According to the Department for Education, primary schools will be “encouraged to cover LGBT content if they consider it age-appropriate to do so, but there is no specific requirement for this.”

In other words, says Hewitt-Clarkson, ministers are hanging teachers like her out to dry. “By leaving this grey area and allowing this vast interpretation, you could end up with what’s happening here [at schools] across the country. If it was compulsory, as it should be under the Equality Act, there would not be a debate.”

Timeline

February 2019

Muslim and Christian protesters demonstrate outside Parkfield school, Birmingham, against the No Outsiders programme

March

No Outsiders is suspended by Parkfield, but protests spread to Anderton Park

May

High Court bans protests outside Anderton Park, imposing an exclusion zone around the school

September

Protests resume at Anderton Park on Friday 13 September

October

The high court will consider whether the temporary exclusion zone should become permanent in the week beginning 14 October