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.

You are correct there. Whoever did OK those lessons should be answerable given the likelihood of issues arising.

Why would Christians be offended by images of Jesus or the Pope?

Some have said that it was the teacher’s right to teach it. Not you I know.

Which exactly highlights the issue here.

As a country we can’t condone violent behaviour, intimidation and death threats.
Those that commit these acts should be jailed

But that’s what’s effectively happened. The parents should have been warned and given a choice. They were not. Freedom only for some, eh?

I look forward to you going into some of the inner city estates with large gangs intimidating the locals and sorting it out.

As this was a lesson on blasphemy one has to assume there was something about those images which were blasphemous…..
We don’t know though, as no one’s talking about those images.

Not really. Were the images of Christ and the Pope blasphemous?

Remember the shitstorm amongst Christians after the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics?

Who has condoned violent and intimidating behaviour -apart from religious nut jobs?

So you're saying all other parents, non- muslim, were made aware of lesson content but muslim parents were omitted from that? Obviously that's wrong.

That is what you mean, isn't it?

If you read my response to another poster. I point out if the teacher was using agreed text and imagery, then whoever agreed to using it should be named and certainly questioned on why they thought it suitable given the local political or religious climate.

First of all, saying ‘go back to Pakistan’ is extremely racist. Many are born here.

Secondly, UK law does allow parents to withdraw their children from certain lessons. If people don’t like this, they should leave the country.

That’s for the law and the police.
Those attacking and threatening asylum seekers were jailed.
Those who made death threats to the teacher should be treated the same.

We shouldn’t as a country be picking and choosing because we are scared, we should be treating everyone equally.

But people in the UK don't have that freedom and haven't had it for as long as I remember.

You can be imprisoned for making a joke if enough people deem it to be in bad taste, for example, even if there's nothing obviously illegal about it.

The one that most immediately springs to mind is the guy who was jailed for copy-pasting a Madeline McCann joke, from a then-fairly-popular website, onto his own Facebook page and changing the name to April Jones. He got a sentence of a few months. It stuck out to me at the time because I recall watching Have I Got News For You the same week, and they made a 9/11 joke of questionable taste - leaving me wonder where exactly the line between light entertainment and criminal behavior is in the UK.

I don't disagree with you in principle, btw, but the limits of free speech in the UK really do not seem well-defined to me.

As the lesson was about blasphemy it follows that all the images were blasphemous in some way.
We don’t know though as only one religion kicked up a storm.

Again I agree wholeheartedly. The recent prosecutions from the 'thought' police are disgusting and frankly frightening.

which included pictures of the Prophet Muhammad, the Pope and Jesus Christ. Pupils were shown a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban containing a cartoon bomb.

It sounds like the images of the Pope and Jesus were not offensive caricatures. If they were, they would have said it.

This is what I mean by Muslims being singled out.

Schools in this country need training on unconscious bias.

The values of their home country I.e. the UK is that parents have the right to withdraw their children from lessons. The parents were not afforded that right.

If you think this country’s laws are wrong then it would be logical for you to leave the country.

I said it earlier but free speech is entirely dependent on location and audience. This is something many here don't grasp.

No
They wouldn’t have said it because they are only interested in the image of the Prophet Mohammed
Why bring up the other images , no one made death threats about them because the class was about blasphemy
Examples of blasphemy were presented to explain
Blasphemy

Why have the Pope at all if he’s not going to be relevant you might as well have a picture of a tree
Of course all the images were blasphemous, this is a teaching environment!!