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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.
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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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Posted: Thu, 06 May 2021 by Stephen Evans ON NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY WEBSITE
The start of an investigation into the Batley Grammar affair raises questions over the government's willingness to ensure assertive religious voices don't dictate what happens in classrooms, says Stephen Evans.
A few weeks ago, Batley Grammar School suspended a teacher who had showed a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad in a lesson, as protesters gathered outside its gates. The teacher was forced into hiding, and the case generated widespread publicity.
The school's priority seemed to be ensuring that loud voices in the local Muslim community weren't offended. This was also true of many public figures who took an interest in the case. Politicians and pressure groups lined up to denounce the use of a cartoon in a lesson. Often, they appeared more concerned about the use of a cartoon than the safety of a teacher and the prospect of mob rule dictating what could be taught in a school.
Now the academy trust behind the school has announced that an investigation has opened into the affair. This provides an opportunity to hear what happened in full, and to learn lessons. The trust has said the investigation will be led by an independent barrister with "significant education experience" and "no prior connection with the trust or any of its trustees or employees", which is encouraging.
However, the remit of the investigation may give cause for concern.
In a statement announcing the start of the inquiry, the trust said it would "examine how certain materials, which caused offence, came to be used" in the lesson. It didn't mention - at least explicitly - the school's treatment of the affected teacher. Are the offence-takers still framing the terms of the discussion?
The National Secular Society has sought clarification from both the trust and the Department for Education that the actions of the school are within the remit of the investigation. None has been forthcoming. The DfE simply said the specific terms of reference are a matter for the trust and investigator. This isn't good enough.
Fundamental principles are at stake. Cultural sensitivity can't be allowed to morph into censorship. Teachers must have the freedom to broaden pupils' horizons and encourage them to think critically. We can't allow decisions about the appropriateness of teaching resources to be influenced by offence taking, intimidation and threats.
The outcome of this investigation will have national implications. This episode has already sent a damaging message on teachers' ability to encourage critical thinking on culturally sensitive issues.
That could easily be forgotten if this is seen as a purely local issue, to be negotiated between assertive imams - who claim to speak for Muslims as a whole – and the individual school or trust.
So the government needs to show some leadership. But the Department for Education doesn't seem interested.
The trust has a legitimate interest in finding out what happened and taking recommendations. But it's also in the public interest to ensure the actions of the school are investigated. Feeling the heat from angry protests outside the school gates, the school issued an 'unequivocal apology' to the offended, deemed the resources to be 'completely inappropriate' and threw its teacher under the bus. If we take this imam's words at face value, the school even gave the protestors a role in drafting its statement. We need to know why this happened.
It's worth considering that a thorough investigation of the Batley affair may raise awkward questions for the government. The Batley affair is reminiscent of events at St Stephen's Primary School in east London in 2018. Then the school decided that girls under eight shouldn't wear hijabs in school, and young children shouldn't fast during Ramadan, on the basis that it was detrimental to their health and learning. Muslim pressure groups such as MEND and the Muslim Council of Britain became involved and the school was bombarded with emails in response, with some abusing and threatening violence against staff. The school was effectively forced to back down.
The Department for Education failed to support the school and said nothing on the row.
Arif Qawi, who was forced to quit as chair of governors following the affair, said he was "flabbergasted" at the DfE's silence. He wrote to the then education secretary Damian Hinds, pleading for help, saying that he and the school's head teacher Neena Lall had been "victims of absolutely vile personal abuse on social media platforms".
"This lack of support and weak attitude will be very detrimental to the nation's children," he said.
The DfE was also slow to respond when Muslim-led protesters objected to teaching about relationships and caused substantial disruption for primary schools in Birmingham in 2019. And when it issued guidance on relationships and sex education that year, it required schools to "take children's religious background into account" in their teaching.
We need to be sure that extremist elements within our communities are not impeding teachers' freedom and ability to prepare all pupils equally for life in modern Britain.
When protesters turn up outside the school gates and initiate harassment campaigns, schools shouldn't be left to fend for themselves. That leaves them at the mercy of the mobs and vulnerable to pressure from assertive, intolerant religious voices.
At least in Batley, the DfE issued a statement saying it was "never acceptable to threaten or intimidate teachers" and "schools are free to include a full range of issues, ideas and materials in their curriculum, including where they are challenging or controversial".
But condemnation only goes so far. The government has broader shoulders than any individual school or academy trust. So if ministers really want to uphold those principles, they should start by ensuring – if nobody else will – that an investigation considers the Batley episode in full.
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THE National Secular Society chief executive Stephen Evans welcomed the support being provided to protect the safety and wellbeing of the teacher, and the appointment of an independent barrister, but has raised questions over the remit of the investigation.
He added: "For any investigation to inspire confidence, it must consider the school's handling of this affair and its treatment of the teacher – impartially and in full.
"It must also bear in mind the importance of upholding fundamental principles. Cultural sensitivity can't be allowed to morph into censorship. Teachers must have the freedom to broaden pupils' horizons and encourage them to think critically. Decisions about the appropriateness of teaching resources shouldn't be influenced by intimidation and threats.
"This affair has caused a great deal of disruption, turmoil and distress, and should be a reminder of the harm that can be done when society fails to stand up to religious bullying."
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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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Posted on National Secular Society website: Thu, 08 Apr 2021 by Bob Forder
Religious leaders have long feared irreverent drawings that could challenge their authority. We should remember that amid the latest effort to prevent the use of Muhammad cartoons, says Bob Forder.
In recent weeks there's been another furious response to the use of Muhammad cartoons – this time in an educational setting, at Batley Grammar School in Yorkshire.
There is nothing new about cartoons being used as a device to poke fun at the religious. They have been a contentious source of blasphemy prosecutions and allegations ever since technical developments enabled their mass print production.
An early example is Leo Taxil's 'La Bible Amusante', which satirised what Taxil regarded as biblical inconsistencies and absurdities. G.W. Foote latched onto the cartoons in this book when he founded The Freethinker in 1881. He would undoubtedly have been encouraged by efforts to have Taxil's book banned in this country. From the outset Foote republished some of the cartoons as 'Comic Bible Sketches', although they were supplemented by others. More than anything else it was cartoons that made The Freethinker notorious and the reason the newspaper was such an immediate success in terms of its circulation.
At the same time, the leading US freethought newspaper The Truthseeker was publishing Watson Heston's cartoons (example below), which satirised biblical passages and celebrated US secularism and secular heroes like Thomas Paine. These were later collected together in books such as 'The Bible Comically Illustrated' and 'The Freethinkers' Pictorial Textbook'. These caused quite a rumpus, although little is known about Watson Heston.
Both D.M. Bennett (who founded The Truthseeker) and Foote were clear about the purpose of their cartoons. They reasoned that if you laugh at priests or ministers you can't take them seriously and they therefore lose authority. He had a point – and the same could be said for imams as for priests. I think this accounts in large part for the furious response in Batley.
Foote was eventually prosecuted for blasphemy (partly for the special 1882 Christmas number of The Freethinker, which was a cartoonists' feast). I include a copy of the cartoon from the front page (see main image). Other contents included a cartoon strip "A new life of Christ" and a particularly contentious cartoon "Moses getting a back view" with a quotation from Exodus "And it shall come to pass that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and I shall take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts". The cartoon features a rather startled Moses staring at a pair of well-filled check trousers with a tear in the rear. None of this has me rolling around with laughter, but I can understand the furious response provoked in 1882 – and Foote's courage in publishing them.
Foote got a year in Holloway Gaol and was widely regarded as a hero and martyr in National Secular Society circles. It was this that ensured he became president when Charles Bradlaugh – the NSS's founder – resigned in 1890.
The Charlie Hebdo cartoons were published for similar reasons and are part of the same tradition.
There is, however, a significant difference between now and then. Those who objected in the 19th century were largely part of an elite which held a privileged position in society as a whole, embodied and supported by the established church. In some ways those demanding retribution in Batley can be considered amongst the least privileged in society and, for them, this is an issue tightly linked to their ethnicity and sense of identity.
This makes the issue far more complex and helps explain the disappointing woolly thinking, platitudes and fudge about the need to engage and listen that has crept in amongst what might loosely be termed the liberal left. But those condoning the dangerous and over-hasty behaviour of the Batley Grammar School governors and management really need to think again.
Secularism is a fundamental liberal democratic principle. The strength and success of liberal democracy rests not only on principles such as fair elections but also on the assumption that the political system accommodates all religions and beliefs with equal respect and access, apart from those intent on its overthrow.
A failure to understand this, and the freedom of speech it entails, is the real threat to us all, particularly the less privileged. Freedom of speech must entail a right to offend, however regrettable this might seem.
Sadly, the array of religious and community leaders (some self-appointed) assembled outside Batley Grammar School purport to represent a less privileged community. But giving in will simply enhance and protect these leaders' own status and position within their community, at others' expense, and run the risk of that community becoming further isolated from society at large.
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Posted on the National Secular Society website by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid on Wed, 31 Mar 2021
The hand-wringing in the face of a vicious campaign against a teacher sends a demoralising message to those fighting for free speech on religion globally and in British Muslim communities, says Kunwar Khuldune Shahid.
The Batley Grammar School teacher who has been suspended, and gone into hiding, after showing a caricature of Islam's prophet Muhammad in class last week, now understandably worries that he might be killed. While the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) worries that the teacher may have shown an image that "plays into" an "Islamophobic trope", and many on the Western left similarly wring their hands, it remains unclear if fearing for one's life over offending Islam also constitutes a phobia. Others, graciously, have responded by quickly condemning 'extremists on both sides', as if the defence of liberal principles were equivalent to Islamist intimidation.
After the satirical French publication Charlie Hebdo was targeted in a jihadist attack, the gruesome murder of its journalists was rationalised through the 'Islamophobia' that it was guilty of, for treating Islam like any other religion. When French schoolteacher Samuel Paty was decapitated after showing Charlie Hebdo's caricatures in school, 'Islamophobia' once again became the rallying cry.
At first it was a publication's act of satirising Islam that translated into asking to be murdered. Now it's teachers showing those cartoons in lessons on blasphemy that is translating into 'asking for it'. Next it may well be critics of this blatant endorsement of Islamic blasphemy laws in the West who might 'ask for it'.
This gruesome eventuality has long been a reality in Muslim-majority countries, where individuals have been killed for mere criticism of the blasphemy laws. A dozen Muslim states sanction death for blasphemy and apostasy, and 20 mandate prison sentences. The day the Batley Grammar School teacher was suspended, and left at the mercy of radical Islamists, yet another man was killed for blasphemy in Pakistan. Since then, over the past week, radical Islamists have initiated violent protests in Bangladesh demanding, among other means of institutionalised persecution, capital punishment for blasphemy against Islam. On Tuesday, a man was burnt to death in Nigeria for 'insulting prophet Muhammad'.
It is impossible to separate the Islamist blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority countries and the demands to silence critique, caricaturing and satire of Islam by Muslim minorities. It shouldn't need saying but it is actually possible to uncompromisingly defend the rights of minorities, and shield them from majoritarian groups, without mollycoddling them over regressive and often downright bigoted beliefs.
Similarly, drawing cartoons or mocking religious beliefs as satire, or exposing believers to ideas completely antipodal to their beliefs in critical learning settings, do not constitute persecution. An offence, or its gravity, needs to be universally applicable and cannot be determined by the reaction of a group. Otherwise, we're a Hindutva attack on a steakhouse away from equating beef cuisine with persecution of Hindus.
Sketches or depictions of Muhammad are no more prohibited in Islam than cow slaughter is in Hinduism; or more poignantly, no more offensive than Hindu wives outliving husbands was two centuries ago. Europe consumed centuries over 'religion wars' between Christian sects which found one another's beliefs offensive. The rise of a radical, and puritanical, literalist brand of Islam, impacting Muslim majorities and minorities alike, is a corollary of a similar sectarian warfare within Islam today.
Some interpretations of Islam have long incorporated the tradition of drawing Muhammad, which means that the ubiquitous claims masquerading as fact that 'Islam prohibits depictions of Muhammad' or that 'Muslims are offended' by such illustrations paints all Muslims with a monolithic, and arguably regressive, brush.
However, even if there is a 'true' version of religion that might uphold certain beliefs, and even if every single one of its billions of adherents were to endorse them identically, that still cannot be used as justification to suppress rights, including the fundamental freedom of speech. And the only legal asterisk on this right should be explicit incitement to violence.
Again, to hold offended sensibilities as the limit of free speech is to not only fail miserably in understanding the very need for protection of such a freedom — since what is acceptable by all doesn't have to be guarded. It is also to constantly lower the threshold of what is 'offensive'. Even more critically, it can shield ideologues from countering viewpoints, which often is the raison d'etre of protests undertaken by those believing their ideas to be the ultimate truth.
Perhaps most pungently, endorsement of this censorship on the part of Western liberals makes it harder to normalise criticism of religion and undermines the fight against Islamic blasphemy laws that hang like a sword over millions in Muslim-majority countries. More than just an ideological regression on the part of the left, such upholding of Islamist ideas has even translated into European courts upholding blasphemy laws that many from Muslim majority countries are escaping from. And in acquiescing to the Islamist narrative in the garb of 'protecting Muslims', liberals in the West have not only abandoned dissidents in Muslim-majority countries, they have also helped facilitate regression of Muslim minorities in their own countries.
When the MCB's first ever female leader was asked questions that would be considered extremely basic for any other community, those otherwise unflinching in their quest for gender quality instinctively shouted 'Islamophobia'. Much of the western left embraces the MCB's calls for 'inclusivity' and 'care' when faced with cartoons. It showed less interest when, for example, an Ahmadi Muslim shopkeeper was killed in an Islamist attack in 2016 – and the Muslim Council of Britain's focus was declaring that 'Ahmadis are not Muslims'.
Shouldn't such marginalisation or violence committed for Islam, or the fear of one's life over cartoons on Islam, be the bigger concern here?
Shouldn't more energy be dedicated towards elimination of this widespread belief, codified in many Muslim-majority countries, but also preached in many mosques in the West, that blasphemy against Islam merits death?
One doesn't have to be a linguist to discern the contrast between statements issued by many Muslim community groups over killings in the name of Islam, and satire of Islam.
Indeed, Western liberals are complicit in facilitating these Islamic blasphemy narratives around the world. For, when states otherwise upholding free speech on religion start backtracking, those living in countries where blasphemy still mandates death will have little hope.
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a writer and social commentator based in Pakistan. The views expressed in our blogs are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the NSS.
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