The teacher from Batley is still in hiding

[Nicetrynigel]

Teacher Batley
His life ruined because a bunch of thugs decided they didn't like what he was teaching in his RE lesson.
This and the Labour MP's request for bhalsphey laws against those of the Abrahamic faith have made me concerned.

People should be free to offer an view against another's religion. It's scary that we are being a country where people thing being offended gives them a right to made death threats.

Yep

It's scary that we are being a country where people thing being offended gives them a right to made death threats.

We aren't. It remains the case that making death threats is a criminal offence in the UK.

Being opposed to someone being gay is different to actively threatening harm and deaths threats to someone showing a photo.

Not liking someone for being gay sucks terribly but unless they are also threatening them it’s entirely different. One is eww I don’t like that one is I want to fucking kill you. Apples and oranges.

I find this narrow, judgemental and dogmatic approach completely at odds with a pluralist liberal democracy.
Religious people, when their religion is mocked or parodied should behave like the Mormons (qv)

There are caricatures of Christian God, Jesus and other Christian icons in newspapers and other publications as well as online in the UK fairly regularly. I don't think Islam is treated any differently to other religions in this regard. I think Muslims quite often behave very differently to the satirisaing of Islam though.

Totally right. Seems perfectly fine to say these blasphemous comments - Oh my God, Jesus Christ, Good God, Jesus H Christ, Holy Mary Mother of God etc.

I hear those all the time and they are just accepted. How the hell are they going to police everything. Stupid idea.

Well said!
We must not blindly allow ourselves to be dragged backwards by religious zealots. But this is what I'm seeing.

I’ve already said that I think Muslims were singled out in that lesson and how the teacher could still have shared images with some pre-planning. He seemed to lack the basic knowledge that Muslims don’t share any images of the prophets, even positive ones.

Some of the images were shared in UK papers and nothing happened, and rightly so.

But no matter where he was teaching, the teacher should not have to go in fear of his life. We live in a modern, tolerant British society. As a Christian, I absolutely hate it when people denigrate Jesus; but would I threaten anyone who blasphemes His name? No.

Ummm could have been the Man City supporters about Hillsborough but good try.

Thanks, I was just about to say the same. Whether people like it or not we do have de facto blasphemy laws and a two tier system because politicians have allowed alot of Muslim immigration whilst being cowardly and pathetic and unwilling to police fairly or stand up for womens rights. It won't end well for our children and makes me angry.

He definitely doesn't deserve death threats, and the government needs to take steps to avoid this kind of mob justice.
BUT the was being a dick and deliberately causing offence. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that freedom of speech laws exist in the UK, nobody has a legal right to not be offended. Everything the teacher did was legal, and quite rightly so, but that doesn't mean he wasn't being a dick.

With cases like this, I think of it as like what if someone made an offensive cartoon about a murdered child, e.g if someone made jokes about Madeline McCann or the Lucy Letby victims, and then the child's parent murdered that person. The parent would definitely be in the wrong for committing murder and should be arrested and imprisoned, but that doesn't mean that the person who made the joke wasn't being an offensive dick.

It should be legal to be an offensive dick, and illegal to kill someone for being offensive dick. but that doesn't mean that we should all start pretending that it's perfectly okay to be an offensive dick.

The reality is, Islam is not a religion or peace or tolerance, its a religion of angry, controlling men

It really isn't, @FitAt50, though I agree with you about the angry controlling men

But that's a cultural thing rather than a religious one - though still only some within that culture - with a few twisted individuals corrupting the Holy Quran for their own ends

Someone asked earlier why they're so unpleasant "if they're confident in their religion", and it may even be that they're not confident at all - because if they were they'd never be behaving like this in the first place

Sorry that was to @Wellingtonspie

He was leading a discussion about free speech. I am not sure that this makes him " an offensive dick".

Who defines what’s offence though.

Not all Muslims have issue with the picture.

Not all Christians have issue with being using the lords name in vain.

Not all people like swear words.

Not all people like cigarettes.

Some people find all or any of the above offence. The smell offensive, the words offence or the picture offence. Some people find breast feeding photos or even just breastfeeding in public offensive or pictures of still born babies. I find topless men in public walking down the street offensive to my eyes and soul deliberately walking around making us all suffer their horrible often sun burnt stomachs.

If being offensive should be a crime then you might as well criminalise everything.

BUT (he) was being a dick and deliberately causing offence

Not so, @hasanyoneseenmykeys
Obviously I wasn't there to know, but the independent report found that he wasn't behaving maliciously, which deliberately causing offence would certainly have entailed

These demented religious fundies can Fuck Right Off. This is not an acceptable way to behave in this country. If they want to live under mediaeval extremist laws, there are plenty of other places to live.

And why would they do that @Ponypatter when they are pandered to by the authorities including the police in this country and probably have a nice life.

When this incident happened, Muslim men gathered outside the school, forcing it to close. On top of making death threats, which is unacceptable in any situation, but beggars belief when it’s over a cartoon, their actions outside the school broke the COVID laws in place at the time. The police did nothing.

In the same month, women holding a peaceful vigil in memory of Sarah Everard were wrestled to the ground and arrested under those same COVID laws.

And people think two-tier policing doesn’t exist and is just right-wing propaganda.

The intolerance pedalled by Islam has been given far too much ground in Europe already. What terrifies me is that those in charge STILL don’t seem to see the dangers of giving in to an ideology whose adherents have no problem with using violence to get their way. It also amazes me that in this day and age so many people still believe so strongly in primitive religions that they behave in this way. Sometimes it’s hard not to fear that we’re doomed to a less and less free future and fundamentalists get more and more power because nobody will stand up to them.

How were Muslims "singled out"? And how would showing images justify death threats and the teacher being hounded out of his job and home?

You are not making any sense.

If you live in a secular society your religious beliefs do not have to be adhered to by people who don't follow your religion, although you have the freedom to practice it.

The law, however, does apply to all. The Muslim students should have been afforded the opportunity to leave the class if they wished to. They don't have the right to deny the lesson to other pupils. And they and their parents certainly have no right to demand that a teacher is sacked and to hound him as they have becaue they felt offended.

The police did nothing.

Police did police the protests and arrests were made:

www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/three-arrests-batley-protest-400-20910119.amp

I agree. The people threatening him should be in prison. Apologising to the thugs and abandoning the innocent victim is an open invitation to other thugs to show they can get away with even worse aggression.

Voted for Labour just in that constituency, or anywhere? Because blasphemy laws are certainly not Labour policy!

When the blasphemy laws were abolished in England and Wales in 2008 (yes, 2008!) Labour whipped its MPs to vote for abolition. All LibDem MPs also voted for abolition. 59 MPs voted against abolition, presumably the DUP and some Tories. Edward Leigh, who is still a Tory MP, complained that abolition would make people think that it was all right to make fun of Christianity. Christian Right organizations like Christian Voice fulminated against abolition.

Mary Whitehouse made serious attempts to invoke blasphemy laws in the 1980s.

By the way, if you want to know when blasphemy laws were abolished in the rest of the UK:

Scotland: This year.

Northern Ireland: Not yet!

I strongly oppose blasphemy laws, and the pandering to ANY religious group; and think that Tahir Ali deserves to be laughed out of court on this issue. But it annoys me that some people seem only to care when it's a religion that is mainly followed by people of recent immigrant origin, and don't seem bothered that, for example, an MP who strongly opposed the abolition of blasphemy laws in England and Wales is now Father of the House, and that a part of the UK, that was nearly torn apart by sectarianism until one generation ago, still has blasphemy laws.

There are a number of religions in which criminality against non-believers is a badge of honour.
Abusing the vulnerable - particularly children - and protecting the guilty are praised and rewarded within clan structures.
It would be interesting to learn how these practices earned the political support of those outside the religions.