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Sun 28 Mar 2021
No one has a right not to be offended. All of us have a duty to challenge bigotry. These two claims are not just compatible, they are often interconnected. Today, though, many view these as conflicting perspectives. To give offence to other cultures or faiths, they argue, is to foment racism; to challenge racism, one should refrain from giving offence.
It’s a belief at the heart of the controversy engulfing Batley grammar school. The facts are still unclear. A teacher apparently showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in a religious education class. Some parents have demanded the teacher be sacked, holding protests outside the school. The school has apologised and suspended the teacher involved. At the heart of the affair, the former Tory cabinet minister Sayeeda Warsi insists, is the issue of “child safeguarding”, of protecting children from racist bullying.
It is inevitable in plural societies that we offend the sensibilities of others. Where different beliefs are deeply held, disagreement is unavoidable. Almost by definition, that’s what it means to live in a plural society. If we cherish diversity, we should establish ways of having such debates and conversations in a civil manner, not try to suppress them. A structured discussion in a classroom, properly done, seems an ideal approach.
It is inevitable, too, that in pursuing social change, we often offend deeply held sensibilities. Many groups struggling for justice and equality – women, gays, non-believers – within religious communities cannot but be blasphemous. In this context, to accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged. Fighting for social justice, in other words, often requires us to offend others. The boundaries of speech are different in a classroom than in the world outside. Here, a teacher is dealing with minors, building a relationship of trust with them, encouraging them to think, and to think about issues that they may not have thought about or may not have wanted to think about.
But here, too, there is nothing wrong in discussing material that may offend or be deemed blasphemous. Some commentators, including Warsi, claim that pupils were shown a Charlie Hebdo cartoon depicting Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. The problem, they say, is not blasphemy but racism.
Whether this claim is true is unclear. Given that, in Paris, Samuel Paty, a teacher, was beheaded after a schoolgirl’s false claim, we should be wary of jumping to conclusions before knowing all the facts. Even if the story is true as reported, however, it does not imply that the teacher was misguided. Nor does it show that the class discussion was a cause of racism or bullying.
One can play a clip of a Bernard Manning joke, show an antisemitic cartoon or discuss a Charlie Hebdo cover in ways that heighten racist prejudices. One can also do each of these things in ways that allow students to think more deeply about the issue at hand and reduce racial or religious tensions. What matters is the manner and context in which the subject is approached. To simply insist that showing offensive material in the classroom is to exacerbate racism is a disingenuous means of manipulating “safeguarding” to limit what can be discussed.
One of the ironies of such controversies is that they serve to silence many Muslim voices and traditions. Virtually every press report on the Batley school controversy has claimed that there is an Islamic prohibition on the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, as, indeed, does the “agreed syllabus for religious education” in West Yorkshire.
This is historically illiterate. There have been many Islamic traditions, particularly in Persia, Turkey and India, open to depicting Muhammad. Only in the 17th century did attitudes shift, particularly among Sunnis. In recent decades, reactionaries, both Sunni and Shia, have seized on prohibition as a means of strengthening their control over Muslim communities. To claim that “Islam prohibits depictions of Muhammad” is to take the most conservative views and present them as representative of Islam.
When we say that we live in a diverse society, we mean that it’s a messy world out there, full of disagreement and debate. That is something we should welcome, not fear, for it is such disagreement and debate that allow us to break out of our culture-bound boxes, to engage in a wider dialogue that can help forge a more universal language of citizenship. The question we should ask ourselves is not how to minimise such debates, but how to create ways of engaging in them more constructively.
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Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
Mon 5th Apr 2021, 5.00
A fundraising campaign for the teacher at the centre of the Muhammad cartoon row is being led by an activist accused of stirring up local ethnic tensions.
It comes as a petition demanding the teacher’s reinstatement reached almost 70,000 signatures.
The staff member’s use of caricatures of the prophet in class sparked protests outside Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire, thrusting it into the middle of a wider row over religion and free speech.
The school has now ordered an independent investigation into its curriculum after immediately suspending the teacher and apologising “unequivocally” over the materials used in RE lessons. The teacher involved is reported to fear for his life after death threats forced him into hiding.
An online fundraising page to help the teacher fight for his “job, reputation and security” secured more than £5,600 in donations within a day of its launch on Wednesday.
Creator Paul Halloran called it the “official fundraiser,” and said he was a family friend who had been asked to set it up.
But Halloran’s involvement in past local community tensions may risk further politicising divides over the issue.
Standing as a candidate in the 2019 local elections, Halloran faced claims from opponents across the political spectrum that he was stirring up ethnic divisions.
Halloran came third in the Barley West ward for the Heavy Woollen District independent party, whose only other local candidate Aleks Lukic was a former UKIP candidate.
Lukics led a controversial campaign to stop non-stunned halal meat being served in schools, with Halloran demanding the council reveal which schools did so.
Kirklees’ Labour council leader Shabir Pandor told the local Yorkshire Live news site their motives were “extreme and dangerous” accusing the pair of trying to “sow division” by politicising the issue.
Conservative leader David Hall agreed all meat should be pre-stunned to avoid animal cruelty, but condemned “those who would try to stir up community tensions” over the issue.
Halloran has also criticised the term “Islamophobia,” saying all racism should be called out. “I don’t see a lot in the Muslim community commenting on grooming gangs and terrorism…. Let’s not invent a word that will stop us debating those things,” he reportedly said, according to the Press local newspaper. He denied accusations of racism.
But Halloran told Schools Week he “wholeheartedly” rejected ‘far-right’ labels, calling them “nonsense” promoted by his political opponents to discredit him. He said he was a respected local man who belonged to no political party, and had friends of “all cultures and religions.”
But he said he remained concerned “the word ‘Islamophobic’ is used at time to stifle reasoned and respectful debate.”
Footage of protests outside Batley Grammar’s gates quickly went viral, catapulting the area into the headlines only a few years after the murder of local Labour MP Jo Cox by a far-right extremist.
Demonstrators’ anger over depictions of Muhammad, reportedly caricatures from French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and the school’s apology for “inappropriate” RE materials quickly sparked a backlash against the backlash.
Many appealed for calm but the row sparked not only fierce rows over blasphemy, schooling, free speech and multiculturalism but also reported death threats. Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi warned debate had been “hijacked by extremists on both sides.”
The DfE swiftly called the protests and threats “completely unacceptable,” and defended the inclusion of controversial curriculum materials. The teacher involved is reported to have been teaching about blasphemy.
National Secular Society chief executive Stephen Evans told Schools Week school leaders “shouldn’t allow blasphemy taboos enforced through intimidation to dictate their teaching.”
The school switched to remote learning amid the protests. The independent investigation will review the “context in which the materials [which caused offence] were used, and to make recommendations in relation to the Religious Studies curriculum so that the appropriate lessons can be learned and action taken, where necessary”.
An independent investigation panel will be appointed over the next fortnight, with the probe set to begin on April 12 and report “towards the end of May.”
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