Religion is a Mental Illness

Suella Braverman: We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain

There has been understandable alarm throughout the country about recent events at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield. I share it. West Yo

thetimes.co.uk

There has been understandable alarm throughout the country about recent events at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield. I share it. West Yorkshire police recorded a non-crime hate incident after a boy dropped a copy of the Quran, which appeared to have been scuffed. The mother of the boy has said he is autistic. Appallingly, he has received death threats and there has been considerable unrest.

I have already indicated my deep concern about this case and the way it has been handled, but it raises a number of broader issues.

The education sector and police have a duty to prioritise the physical safety of children over the hurt feelings of adults. Schools answer to pupils and parents. They do not have to answer to self-appointed community activists. I will work with the Department for Education to issue new guidance spelling this out.

Instead, a disturbing video showed a meeting — which looked more like a sharia law trial, inappropriately held at a mosque instead of a neutral setting, whereby the mother of one boy was made to account for his behaviour in front of an all-male crowd.

We do not have blasphemy laws in Great Britain, and must not be complicit in the attempts to impose them on this country. There is no right not to be offended. There is no legal obligation to be reverent towards any religion. The lodestar of our democracy is freedom of speech. Nobody can demand respect for their belief system, even if it is a religion. People are legally entitled to reject — and to leave — any religion. There is no apostasy law in this country. The act of accusing someone of apostasy or blasphemy is effectively inciting violence upon that person.

Everyone who lives here has to accept this country’s pluralism and freedom of speech and belief. One person’s freedom to, for example, convert from Islam to Christianity is the same freedom that allows a Muslim to say that Jesus was a prophet but not God Incarnate.

This freedom is absolute. It doesn’t vary case by case. It can’t be disapplied at a local level. And no one living in this country can legitimately claim that this doesn’t apply to them because they belong to a different tradition.

All of this is typically understood. If I told a socialist they should politely endorse my sincerely held conservative beliefs, he or she would laugh in my face — and rightly so. Roman Catholics readily understand that people are going to criticise the Pope or mock the concept of transubstantiation.

Yet things are going in the wrong direction. We see that in the monstrous way that JK Rowling and others have been treated for daring to challenge radical gender ideology. And there is a particular issue with attitudes towards Islam.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims are tolerant, peaceful and embrace our values. But some Muslims and non-Muslims alike — as well as Islamist extremists — believe that Islam should enjoy a special status, protected from disrespect.

There is a long, ignoble history of that, which goes back at least as far as the furore over The Satanic Verses. It is rooted in a view — actually a bigoted one — that Muslims are uniquely incapable of controlling themselves if they feel provoked. And it has excused agitators using fear to force people to bend to their demands.

In June last year, a cinema chain cancelled all UK screenings of The Lady of Heaven after threatening behaviour by groups of Muslim men outside cinemas. A teacher from Batley who showed his students a Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Muhammad is still living in hiding, following angry protests outside the school and online threats from local community leaders.

The way to ensure community cohesion and peace is not to cave into bullies, nor to demand that people aren’t “unnecessarily offensive”. The right approach is to defend our pluralist, free society very robustly indeed.

I am not happy with the way non-crime hate incidents are recorded and I will soon be announcing new guidance for police.

Timidity does not make us safer; it weakens us. A fear of being seen as “Islamophobic” led to the grooming gangs scandal. It led the Prevent counterterrorism programme to fail to recognise the scale of the threat of Islamist extremism, to deny the individual culpability of extremists, and actively to co-operate with extremist groups. It fails to protect people from the mob.

Enough. It is high time for leaders — real leaders, not self-appointed hot-heads — to stand up for our free society. It is this country’s sacred promise to everyone who lives here, whatever their background. Every organisation that answers to me as home secretary will be in no doubt of where I stand.

Suella Braverman is home secretary

Four Wakefield pupils suspended after Quran damaged at school

A head teacher says there was "no malicious intent" as the holy book's cover was torn.

BBC News

Four pupils have been suspended from a West Yorkshire secondary school after a copy of the Quran was damaged by students.

Wednesday's incident at Wakefield's Kettlethorpe High School happened when a copy of the Islamic text was brought in by a Year 10 pupil.

Head teacher Tudor Griffiths said the book remained intact and there was "no malicious intent" from those involved.

He held a meeting with concerned community leaders on Friday.

Independent councillor for Wakefield East, Akef Akbar, called the meeting after being contacted by people calling for more information.

He said reports the Quran had been burnt or destroyed were untrue, and he had inspected the book himself during the meeting.

Mr Akbar said he had been told the book had been taken to school as a dare by a pupil who lost while playing a Call of Duty videogame with other students.

While at the school it sustained a slight tear to the cover and smears of dirt on some of the pages.

Mr Akbar said he understood it had been kicked around on the school premises - a claim denied by the school.

Head teacher Mr Griffiths said in a statement: "We would like to reassure all our community that the holy book remains fully intact and that our initial enquiries indicate there was no malicious intent by those involved.

"However, we have made it very clear that their actions did not treat the Quran with the respect it should have, so those involved have been suspended and we will be working with them to ensure they understand why their actions were unacceptable.

"This morning, we met with our local Muslim community leaders, local councillors and police to share all the information we currently know, the action taken and the immediate steps we have taken to reinforce the values and behaviour we expect from every member of this school community to ensure that all religions are respected."

A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Police said they were "liaising" with the school.

"Initial enquiries have confirmed minor damage was caused to the text and officers are continuing to work closely with the school," they added.

"their actions did not treat the Quran with the respect it should have"

Britain’s blasphemy laws | Ben Sixsmith | The Critic Magazine

In 2021, a teacher was suspended from a school in Batley, Yorkshire for showing pupils a caricature of Muhammad during a religious studies l

The Critic Magazine

In 2021, a teacher was suspended from a school in Batley, Yorkshire for showing pupils a caricature of Muhammad during a religious studies lesson. Protests from aggrieved Muslims were fierce. The teacher went into hiding, and has never emerged again — doubtless remembering the fate of Samuel Paty, the French teacher who was killed for a similar “crime”. 

Wakefield is seven miles from Batley. In Kettlethorpe High School, in the city, four boys have been suspended. Their sin? Causing slight cosmetic damage to a copy of the Quran — with, as their headteacher states, “no malicious intent by those involved”.

Slightly damaging a book — and a book, no less, that the students had purchased themselves — is grounds for suspension now? It sure is, but not because the authorities at Kettlethorpe High School are iron disciplinarians but because they are trying to appease a mob of activists.

Apparently, one of the pupils brought the Quran into school after losing a bet. (This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but kids make odd decisions.) According to the school’s investigation, it appears that one of the students dropped the book after being collided with. It also picked up a smudge of dirt — which will surprise no one who is familiar with the hygiene of teenage boys.

Somehow, rumours spread. Activists came to believe that the Quran had been kicked or spat on, which inflamed a “huge uproar” in the Muslim community. Some even suggested that the Quran had been torn up in front of Muslim students.

Had that taken place it would have been deplorable. (Just as if a Bible had been torn up in front of Christian students, or a Torah in front of Jewish students.) As far as I can tell, though, there is no evidence that it did.

But activists were unsatisfied — elected officials among them. Usman Ali, for example, a local Labour councillor, announced that the Quran had been “desecrated” and that the school, the police and local authorities should be taking “swift and appropriate action to deal with this grave situation”. “We all need to work together to make sure that this terrible provocation does not set back community relations,” Ali wrote — blissfully unaware that the people endangering community relations were those, like him, who were treating an incident of teenage rambunctiousness like a school shooting.

The school, after liaising with the police — because of course the police have nothing better to do than investigating slight cosmetic damage to a book — and “community leaders” — whoever the hell they are — suspended the boys.

Independent councillor Akef Akbar is playing the peacemaker in this situation. He has emphasised that “absolutely nobody should engage in any violence”, and that the kids who have been suspended should be “protected and safeguarded”. Well, that’s good. 

But while I think Mr Akbar is sincere in his desire to stabilise community relations, the premises he works from need interrogating. He is asking local Muslims to be magnanimous enough to tolerate an outrageous provocation — when in reality it was a non-event that should not have caused a scandal to begin with.

In one video released on his Facebook page, he addresses Wakefield residents alongside a woman who he introduces as the mother of the boy who brought the Quran into school. The boy, it turns out, was “highly autistic” — yet more reason to sympathise with him! But while Akbar is preaching peace — certainly better than the alternative — he is still behaving as if the boy committed some sort of monstrous crime. He was “rightfully expelled”, he says. His mother has “of course shown her remorse”. “Of course”! What do you mean “of course”!? Why should she feel remorse because her son brought a book into school?

Akbar tells us that the autistic boy has been receiving death threats and threats to beat him up. You might think this would be cause for fierce condemnation. “Passions do flare,” says Akbar, “And sometimes we let them out in the wrong manner.” Passions do flare? We’re talking about death threats — not someone using the f-word. Imagine the uproar if a Muslim child received death threats and a white politician shrugged “passions do flare”.

“The mother has had to inform the police,” Akbar says, but “to her credit” she doesn’t want the children to be prosecuted. Why shouldn’t she?

Again, I think that Mr Akbar is doing the right thing according to his values. But we should not accept a preposterous situation in which a child handling a book with some degree of carelessness is framed as a more grave misdeed than sending death threats. That Muslims view the Quran with great reverence is entirely their right. But in a secular society they cannot expect everyone else to do the same.

The school, meanwhile, has betrayed its students — hanging them out to dry to appease hair trigger sensitivities. That at least one of them was heavily autistic rubs home the base cowardice and irresponsibility of adults who should have been standing up for kids. 

Somehow, Britain has adopted de facto blasphemy laws. They don’t even have to be formalised. In one town, a teacher had to flee for his life for the crime of showing a picture. In another, just down the road, four kids were kicked out of school and showered with death threats for the crime of dropping a book. This cannot be allowed to continue.

“I feel as if I have been plunged, like Alice, into the world beyond the looking glass, where nonsense is the only available sense. And I wonder if I’ll ever be able to climb back through.”

-- Salman Rushdie