That’s some equivalence right there.
‘Prophet Mohammed school row death threats are wrong – but so was showing cartoon’
As if showing a cartoon and death threats are even on the same page. We are supposed to live in a country with Judaeo/Christian systems of liberalism. We are not bound by Islam’s rules and nor should we be. As it is, I have no problem if parents want to protest, providing it is peaceful, and having had their say, go home and leave the teacher and the school alone.
No one in this country should be bound by medieval blasphemy laws. Showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons as part of a discussion on religion rather proved the teacher’s case, I think, given the thin-skinned reaction.
If there was any spine in the powers that be, anyone making death threats would be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The teacher should have been supported by the school with the response that free speech is sacrosanct and while people are free to dislike it, they are not free to use intimidation to stop it. Or piss off to the kind of shithole governed by Islamic law. As for the school apologising, that just encourages it.
The fact is that the pictures are obscene and if they were about any one of us we would feel totally justified in being upset and thinking about taking legal action over them.
No they are not and no we wouldn’t. Charlie Hebdo has published similar pictures of Christ and our Queen and no one batted an eyelid, because we are civilised.
In this case, when they are about the single most revered figure in the whole faith of Islam then no wonder that Muslims feel so violated.
A violent, brutal warlord who used his scam religion to aid his invasion and conquest of the Arabian peninsular. Had he been alive today, he would have rightly been vilified as a cult leader. That is what he was. There is nothing about him that is remotely likeable, let alone worth deifying. He was a nasty, violent, murderous butcher.
I understand the concept of free speech but…
No, you don’t. As soon as you put in the “but” you tell us that you do not believe in free speech. You certainly don’t understand it. If you did, you would accept that no matter how offensive some might find it, that freedom is sacrosanct, no matter what. That Islam is based upon perpetual offence means that we need to be more robust, not less.
But, hey, it’s worth all the treading on eggshells for the doctors and engineers they provide to our poor country….
What did we do before our country was so enriched?
Does Islam have a place in the west? I don’t think it’s compatible at all with our culture. I expect as with most religions, that most followers just want to go about their daily lives, but it’s not those that I worry over.
There’s no such thing as islamophobia, it’s perfectly reasonable to fear an ideology that wishes me dead or enslaved.
This weasel headmaster should be sacked. There is no place in this country for Muslim intolerance. Its quite all right for Christians to be mocked but not Muslims. The majority of our population is white and its time the media etc remembered this. Many people like me are getting fed up with being made to feel strangers in our own country withe our proud culture and heritage conti ually attacked and denigrated.
Agree, Timothy, Gary Kibble, as head teacher, should have backed his teacher and defended western liberal values. Instead, the spineless coward grovelled before ignorant bullies.
… and in today’s Religious Education lesson, we will demonstrate that aggression, intolerance and ignorance are all still alive and well in a large section of the Islamic community…
‘A violent, brutal warload…’
Thank you, Longrider, for making this point.
Most people know nothing of the facts of Mohammed’s life, and we should try to get the truth more widely known. Perhaps then we could reduce the number of people who are inclined to ‘respect’ the violent, oppressive set of beliefs that exist under cover of the word ‘religion’
Oops. Obvious typo ‘warlord’ would be right in my comment; ‘warload’ is not.
It might be more helpful if teachers, rather than showing the cartoons, used discussions on free speech to point out, using Islam’s own writings, that Mohammed was a slave owner, slave trader and encouraged the rape of slaves, that he married a nine year old, that he robbed caravans and that he had his enemies murdered.
James Strong, exactly right, most people think he was another Jesus Christ and islam is a religion of peace.
mohammed, married many times (13 possibly), His third, and favourite, was Aisha.
She was 6 years old, he was 50.
It was ok though, because, although under arab/moslem law she was too young for sexual intercourse, he was allowed to indulge in ‘mufakhathat’ = ‘thighing’. Look it up.
The marriage was consummated when she was 9.
The most perfect man, whom all good moslems should emulate.
When teaching about Mohammed and Islam, there has to be a chapter on the meaning, and use, of the word “taqqiya”, where one can lie, on oath if necessary, as long as it benefits that religion and the person following it.
Not to forget jizya, which amounts to an organised protection racket.
I hope you don’t mind my French, but that was a fucking good polemic. I LIKE it! Big time. So true. So very true.
Brendan O’Neil has written an excoriating piece for the Spectator on the Batley Grammar School row.
Everything about the Batley Grammar controversy stinks. It began when a teacher at the prestigious West Yorkshire school, as part of a religious education class, showed his pupils an image of Muhammad. Some Muslim groups that caught wind of this fact started stomping their feet. Mohammad Sajad Hussain of the Islamic charity Purpose Of Life said Muslims will feel “deeply hurt” by the teacher’s behaviour and demanded that he be “permanently removed”. At 7.30am yesterday morning a group of mostly young men gathered at the school demanding that the teacher be sacked for the allegedly awful sin of displaying an image of the Prophet.
What happened next was staggering, even by the standards of today’s yellow-bellied culture of self-censorship. Batley Grammar’s headmaster, Gary Kibble, suspended the teacher – pending an investigation – and issued a “sincere” and “unequivocal” apology for the “totally inappropriate”…
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/batley-grammar-s-shameful-capitulation#
Some pupils at the school have started a petition in support of the teacher. You can sign it here
https://www.change.org/p/batley-grammar-school-keep-the-rs-teacher-at-batley-grammar-school
The Free Speech Union has also stepped in, lodging a complaint with the Charity Commission about Purpose of Life, a Muslim charity which publicly named the teacher at the centre of the row
https://twitter.com/SpeechUnion/status/1375782076650287108
Stop Press:
Sarah Vine in MoS also critical of the witch hunt and school’s instant capitulation to screaming mob of RoPs
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9410495/
Stop Press 2:
Should misogyny be a hate crime? Toby joined Claire Fox, Emma Webb and Peter Whittle for a panel discussion at the New Culture Forum to point some of the difficulties and dangers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbuPj1-fxmI&t=1s