As I cross the tarmac towards the King Fahad academy in west London, a woman clad from tip to toe in black robes, only her eyes visible, enters the gates. Visitors are escorted by a man with a walkie-talkie to the reception area where a gaggle of small children in green jumpers, some of the girls draped with white headscarves, line up under the watchful photos of Saudi Arabian monarchs. There’s a sign pointing to the girls’ mosque and a notice listing prayer monitors for the infants section. Awkwardly, I adjust my dress, wondering whether I should have donned trousers.

But then, I remind myself, this is a school on British soil, checked by British school inspectors, teaching the children of Britons as well as Saudi diplomats. Why should I be worrying whether my skirt is appropriate?

Sacked British teacher Colin Cook dragged this 520-pupil academy, which receives more than £4m a year from the Saudi royal family, into the glare of the media last week. Cook, who is bringing an employment tribunal claim for £100,000 for alleged unfair dismissal, race discrimination and victimisation, claimed that the Islamic school where he had worked for 19 years was teaching hate. The case will be heard in the autumn.

Children, he said, even as young as five, were being taught from Arabic textbooks published by the Saudi ministry of education, that describe Jews as apes and Christians as pigs.

In his statement of case Cook gives more detail of the books’ alleged contents: “Pupils are asked to mention some repugnant characteristics of Jews,” he writes. “Year 1 pupils are asked to give examples of worthless religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, idol worship and others . . . The teachers on the Saudi curriculum . . . presumably endorse this racist view-point or teach it without complaint.”

Although the new director, Sumaya Alyusuf, a 48-year-old mother of three, moved quickly to try to limit the fall-out, convening a press conference at which it was announced that the offending pages would be ripped from the books, other controversial details soon emerged.

The King Fahad academy is one of several schools around the world founded by the late Saudi king. All subscribe to the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Louise Ellman, an MP who chairs the Jewish Labour movement, said that the situation was “part of the deliberate Saudi initiative to instil Wahhabi extremism amongst Muslims and the rest of society”.

In his statement Cook claims that nonSaudis such as himself were viewed at the London academy as “second-class Muslims”. “In Saudi Arabia,” he writes, “nonSaudis have very few human rights . . . even today only men have the vote.” The King’s schools, he alleges, were regarded as “extensions of Saudi Arabia”.

Children of preacher Abu Hamza (currently in Belmarsh prison serving seven years for soliciting murder and incitement to racial hatred) are pupils at the academy, where annual fees are between £1,000 and £1,500. So, it has been reported, are the children of Abu Qatada, who has been described as Al Qaeda’s ambassador to Europe.

By the end of the week Jim Knight, the schools minister, had promised an investigation. The King Fahad academy, like all schools in Britain, has a legal duty to promote tolerance. “It would be completely unacceptable for any school to have material which makes the sort of inflammatory assertions that are being alleged,” said Knight.

The previous director is no longer in post. Welcoming me in his place with Saudi sweetmeats last week was the American-educated, trouser-suited Alyusuf, previously the head of the girls’ wing. So where is her predeces-sor? “I can’t comment on that. His children are still here. I don’t know where he is. . . I wouldn’t ask his daughter or son, it is a personal matter,” she says.

She seems a palatable figurehead — a middle-aged counterpoint to what she calls the “negative stereotype” of veiled, compliant Saudi women. Brought in to spearhead plans to replace the Saudi curriculum with the International Baccalaureate, Alyusuf says she has been unfairly treated by the media in the past week, including feeling “bullied” on Newsnight.

Even within the school she has a challenge on her hands with her mission to modernise the academy resisted by some parents. “Some fear a loss of identity, but we have to be more open, integrated and global rather than enclosed,” she asserts.

Nonetheless, she insists that the offending text books will still be used — and even seeks to explain the passages that caused the furore in the first place. “One word caused the conflict,” she says, referring to the reference to Jews as apes. “It wasn’t the Jews who were meant by that.”

As for the description of Christians as pigs. “In Arabic this isn’t what it says. It’s like saying that those people who stray from their prophets, whether from Jesus or Moses . . . have the brain of a four or five-year-old.”

Why did she keep the books in the school rather than throwing them out or perhaps symbolically burning them? Because other chapters she says, describe how “the prophet asks Muslims to follow in the footsteps of Jews and Christians . . . the media preferred to focus on the negative”.

Tellingly, Alyusuf reveals that her own three sons, who are at British universities, finished their schooling at English-speaking colleges. “The Saudi curriculum at this academy was taught in Arabic — there weren’t enough English lessons to enable children to enter university in English language countries,” she says.

David Bell complained two years ago, when he was chief inspector, that Islamic schools were a potential threat to Britain’s sense of national identity — teaching a narrow curriculum that failed to prepare children for life in a multicultural democracy. His remarks were dismissed then as Islamophobia but last weekseemed more like a prophetic warning.

“Hopefully we will succeed when all this turmoil is over,” said Alyusuf on Friday. “The school is trying to move forward. If people really care about what these children turn out to be, they should think very hard about what they say in this debate.”

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