The Kerala Government has ordered the closure of Peace International School for following a syllabus that promotes Islamic orthodoxy and religious enmity. The Peace School and the Peace Foundation were under scanner of probe agencies from late 2016 after it was found that many of 21 persons from Kasaragod and Palakkad who reportedly joined the Islamic State (ISIS) camps in Afghanistan had close connections with them.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan ordered the closure of the school on the basis of the reports submitted by the Education Department and the Ernakulam District Collector under whose jurisdiction the school came. The Chief Minister has ordered that the students of the school should be shifted to other educational institutions in the same region.
The school run by Kozhikode-based Peace Foundation caught the attention of police and Intelligence agencies in 2016 due to its communally oriented syllabus and following reports that certain persons who had allegedly been recruiting youths to ISIS were working with it. The foundation is running 13 Peace Schools in Kerala.
Whether the action would be applicable to other Peace Schools would be known only when the Government issues the official order in this regard.
The Government had also decided that it will not grant the non-objection certificate required for getting CBSE affiliation for the school after the Kochi police registered a case against its principal, administrator and managing committee members in October, 2016 on the basis of a complaint from the Education Department.
As per the FIR, police had registered the syllabus being taught in the school had communal orientation and was intended at promoting enmity among different sections of society. Such subjects that allegedly promoted Islamic orthodoxy and communalism were being taught even to students of the lower primary section. The school has been functioning in Kochi since 2009.
The school, which was not following the textbooks of the NCERT, SCERT or the CBSE, was teaching books compiled by a Navi Mumbai-based Islamic educational institution, Burooj Realisation. The Kochi Police had arrested three persons working with the Mumbai-based institution in December, 2016.
Merin Jacob, a Christian girl from Kochi who converted to Islam and was part of the group that joined the ISIS, had worked with the school, which had classes from lKG to eighth standard. Merin had assumed the name of Miriyam after embracing Islam. She had left the country with husband Yahia of Palakkad, who also had converted to Islam from Christianity.
Abdul Rashid Abdullah of Thrikkarippur, Kasaragod, an engineering graduate who was the chief coordinator of the group that had fled India to join the ISIS, was associated with the Peace School in his district. Rashid had left India with his wife Ayesha and two-year-old daughter Sarah.
Bihar native Yasmin Ahmed said to be the second wife of Abdul Rashid Abdullah, had also worked as a teacher in the Peace International School at Kottakkal in Muslim-majority Malappuram district four years ago. Yasmin was arrested from Delhi airport while preparing to leave for Kabul as per Rashid’s instructions.