Less than a mile from my house in West London is a prestigious, Saudi-funded Muslim private school, the King Fahd Academy, which has been much in the news recently. Colin Cook, a former teacher there who is suing the school for wrongful dismissal, claims that Arabic textbooks used there contain passages in which Jews are described as “apes” and Christians as “pigs.” Religions other than Islam are described as “repugnant” or “worthless.”

Some of the students at King Fahd are the children of Saudi diplomats, but most are British Muslims, among them the children of the jailed, hook-handed Islamist preacher Abu Hamza. On Tuesday the principal of the school, Dr. Sumaya Alyusuf, confirmed that these books are indeed used. She told the BBC that “these books have good chapters . . . that will serve our objectives.”

This raises two questions: What “objectives” might those be? And did Dr. Alyusuf mean to speak so frankly?