Pro-Hezbollah teacher in London vows to make children holy warriors

[duluxe]

A pro-Hezbollah teacher at an Islamic school located minutes from a London synagogue has vowed to make children holy warriors, the JC can reveal.


Photos obtained by this newspaper show schoolgirls at Jaaferiya school in Tooting wearing green bandanas and a boy wearing a T-shirt that reads: “I don’t see death as anything but bliss.”


The school’s walls can be seen plastered with images of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s brutal Supreme Leader notorious for operating terror proxies across the Middle East, human rights violations and seeking the destruction of Israel.


In a Facebook post on October 7, a trustee and teacher at Jaaferiya school, Aun Ali Naqvi, shared an emoji of a Palestinian flag and said the day marked “happiness”.


A day later he wrote in a chilling post: “We will make our children soldiers of Imam (Aaj)” – a 9th-century figure whom Shia Muslims believe will reappear one day to wage an apocalyptic war against non-Muslims and rid the world of evil.


In another post on the day Israel attacked a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, Naqvi appeared to suggest that children should take up arms, saying: “When the lion among us is killed, the children recognise the enemy and seek revenge.”


Naqvi, who has claimed children in the UK are “brainwashed” by immoral Western values, also shared an image memorialising Hezbollah terror chief Ibrahim Akil as “martyr”, captioning a photo of him “martyr commander of H/e/z/b/o/l/l/a/h”.


The charity that runs the school and its mosque, Idara-e-Jaaferiya, is already under investigation by the Charity Commission and the JC’s evidence has been added to the probe, a spokesman said.






Naqvi – who has been photographed teaching large groups of young children at Jaaferiya – regularly shares gushing social media posts about the Supreme Leader and has posted about defeating the “enemy” and waging a “war against those who fought you until the Day of Resurrection”.


Naqvi claimed that children are being “brainwashed” in UK schools. In a post on his Facebook profile, he wrote: “Homosexuality, sex education, atheism, liberal ideology are openly taught to the children of primary schools... That means our children are being brainwashed. Just because you have come to the West does not mean that you will follow their example, brother.”


When Iran threatened Israel before it launched hundreds of drones and missiles in April 2024, Naqvi quoted Khamenei, writing: “You will regret the mistake of attacking the Iranian embassy... Most of the markets in Tel Aviv have closed. Shelters have run out of space. And still the whole world is waiting what is going to happen? Just a moment of a syed’s finger” [Khamenei’s finger].


As Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen seized a cargo ship in international Red Sea waters, the teacher appeared to celebrate, writing that Yemen had become “so strong today” and showed “no compromise”.


In 2023, the JC reported that Naqvi taught children to memorialise the Iranian terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani days after he was killed in a US drone strike in 2020.


As commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, Soleimani oversaw Iran’s funding and direction of terror groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah.


Naqvi wrote it was “essential we use our madressas to teach our children about our Shahuda [martyrs] and our leaders”. His posts show children holding pictures of Soleimani and were captioned “General Soleimani Anti-Zionism”.


Despite the controversy, Naqvi continued to have an influential role at the school and sits on Idara-e-Jaaferiya’s board of trustees.


Last year Idara-e-Jaaferiya moved its school – which teaches on Saturdays only – from the mosque on Church Lane to the premises of local school Furzedown Primary. Furzedown was approached for comment.


Meanwhile, Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune reported in 2016 that the charity’s chair, Muhammad Raza, was a “senior leader” in a Pakistani political party that Reuters described as having been accused of running Karachi “like a mafia state”. Raza was active in Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) during the period that the allegations were made – he left the party in 2016 to join Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), founded by former MQM politicians.


In 2014, then Tooting MP Sadiq Khan thanked Jaaferiya for hosting an Iftar. The same year, Conservative councillor and former parliamentary candidate Dan Watkins addressed a crowd at Jaaferiya, standing directly in front of several images of the ayatollahs.


https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/pro-hezbollah-teacher-in-london-vows-to-make-children-holy-warriors-fd13j3e0




Children at Jaaferiya school

The mosque, which helps organise London’s Quds Day march, the annual Tehran-backed rally against Israel, has shared a poster encouraging followers to attend the demonstration featuring the Star of David in flames.


Numerous posts on the mosque’s social media pages glorify Khamenei and quote his speeches. One called for the “power of Islam [to] be established in the world”, while several others show children and babies in the mosque wearing green bandanas.


The mosque runs the Islamic Saturday school, or madrassa, for children aged five to 14 that professes to provide “a holistic Islamic education that fosters a strong sense of identity, compassion, respect, and community service”.