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EDITOR'S NOTE:
Chris Sloggett wrote the opinion piece below on the 2nd, July on the National Secular Society website.
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VOTERS and politicians who value social cohesion and basic democratic principles should reject the trend of pandering to religious tribalism, says Chris Sloggett.
The recent events at Batley Grammar School are well-documented, but still shocking to recount. A loud group of intolerant Muslims gathered at the gates of a school demanding a teacher's dismissal because they objected to a resource he used in class. The school suspended the teacher and issued a grovelling apology. The teacher faced threats, and soon afterwards two of his colleagues were also suspended.
A local investigation has found that the resource which the teacher showed - a cartoon of Islam's prophet Muhammad - was not used with any ill intent. The teacher was nominally reinstated. But he and his colleagues can't return to work because they fear they could be attacked. Meanwhile the investigation has effectively enforced a blasphemy taboo on the school by saying the cartoon, or similar ones, shouldn't be used again.
The teacher at the centre of the row has been driven out of the area and into hiding. The mob that hounded him has got what it wanted. Other schools around the country will have taken note.
And the politicians have moved on. The Department for Education has called on parents to accept the outcome of the local investigation. The department and others have presented this as if it's some kind of reasonable compromise. But anyone who cares about teachers' freedom to do their jobs without facing intimidation and threats - on this issue or any other - should say what this is: a meek surrender to demands for censorship.
When the protests first broke out many politicians and commentators wrung their hands. Some called for calm, but the message was often that the main concern lay in the minutiae of a handful of teachers' decisions about how to present a particular lesson in one school.
The grubby Batley and Spen by-election, which limped to a close...., helped to highlight the price to be paid for this. When the issue came up during the campaign, mainstream candidates' responses smacked of fear, self-interest and short-termist thinking. They either doggedly avoided it or offered responses which were weak to the point of meaninglessness, as a piece from Batley by Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday highlighted this weekend. Meanwhile George Galloway spotted an opportunity to weaponise the issue to try to win over some reactionary Muslim voters, saying the school had "absolutely no right" to use the cartoon.
Did the politicians think their positions were right, or did they just not want to upset a perceived bloc vote? Either way, this collective wall of silence was alarmingly predictable. It's now a standard tactic to treat large swathes of voters primarily as members of various religious 'communities', and to appeal to them through the gatekeepers who claim to speak for them.
But this approach sends the message that religious identity groups can make increasingly unreasonable demands and nobody will dare to say no to them. In Batley, there seems to have been a widespread unspoken agreement that freedom of expression - the most important freedom which citizens in a democracy enjoy - could be treated as a commodity and signed away for electoral convenience.
Politicians should beware where the multi-communal game leads. If they rely on religious identity politics to shore up their support, they'll come under pressure to extend more privileges to particular religious groups. Others will organise along competing identitarian lines, or grow bewildered that politicians appear uninterested in them. The principle that we all enjoy equal citizenship and that politicians should seek to serve all of our interests will be further frayed.
There will also be fertile ground for bad actors of various stripes. The Batley and Spen campaign was marred by inter-communal tensions and intimidatory tactics, including homophobic intimidation aimed at Labour candidate Kim Leadbeater. More moderate and reasonable voices, such as a group of Muslim women who rejected the authority of a "loud minority" of Muslim men this week, faced an uphill battle to make themselves heard. Several far right candidates also spotted an opportunity to advance their agendas.
This ugly campaign should be a prompt to pause and reconsider. Indulging religious tribalism is risky and unsustainable. Voters and politicians who value social cohesion and basic democratic principles should unite against it.
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A teacher who was suspended after showing children a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad can return to the classroom.
Protests were held outside Batley Grammar School after the teacher showed an image during a religious studies lesson in March.
An independent investigation found the teacher did not intend to cause offence by showing the image.
The school said it would offer more guidance and training for staff.
The image was shown on more than one occasion to students during lessons earlier this year, the investigation found.
In an executive summary of the report, the trust said teaching staff "genuinely believed that using the image had an educational purpose and benefit".
But the trust said it recognised that using the image did cause "deep offence" to a number of students, parents and members of the school community, adding that it "deeply regrets the distress" caused.
'Suspensions lifted'
A spokeswoman for the Batley Multi Academy Trust said the school would put the recommendations from the report "into practice immediately".
She added: "The findings are clear, that the teaching staff involved did not use the resource with the intention of causing offence, and that the topics covered by the lesson could have been effectively addressed in other ways.
"In the light of those conclusions, the suspensions put in place while the investigation was under way will now be lifted."
The National Education Union said it was "pleased the correct decision has been reached" following the lifting of the suspension.
A Department for Education spokesperson said parents, families and the local community should "welcome and support the trust's comprehensive plan to strengthen its oversight of the curriculum".
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The National Secular Society has accused the Dept. of Education of 'washing its hands' of the investigation
by Connor Teale YORKSHIRE LIVE
11:28, 4 MAY 2021
Government ministers have been urged to do more to ensure an investigation into the use of a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad by a teacher at Batley Grammar School is not "unduly influenced" by local imams.
The chief executive of the National Secular Society (NSS) has claimed the Department for Education (DfE) has "washed its hands" of the teacher who has been suspended following the row.
And officials at the DfE have also been accused of not doing enough to ensure the probe will examine whether the school was right to immediately suspend the teacher in question, reports The Telegraph.
To get the latest email updates from Examiner Live, click here .
Stephen Evans, chief executive of the NSS told The Telegraph: "This is a bit of a test case for how these things are handled, that’s why it is important.
"Here we have a teacher in fear of his life, in hiding and suspended from his job – yet there is nothing to indicate the materials were not handled correctly.
"We are concerned that the Department for Education doesn’t seem interested enough given that the outcome of this will have national implications. They have washed their hands of it."
Angry protestors descended on the school on Carlinghow Hill in March to demand the teacher responsible for showing the cartoon during a religious studies lesson be sacked.
The school's headteacher, Gary Kibble, issued an 'unequivocal apology' in the aftermath of the protests and announced the teacher in question had been suspended.
Reports suggested the teacher at the centre of the row went into hiding due to "fearing for his life".
The events prompted Batley Multi Academy Trust to appoint a panel, led by an independent barrister, to carry out an investigation into how the material came to be used in class. The probe is now underway.
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