Name: Batley’s hardliners are winning by exploiting Britain’s liberal principles
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Batley’s hardliners are winning by exploiting Britain’s liberal principles

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Everyone is afraid, and nobody admits it. After a teacher in Yorkshire used a drawing of the Prophet Mohammed to teach a lesson about blasphemy, angry Muslims gathered outside his school. The teacher was suspended. The school pre-empted its own inquiry, and apologised. The teaching unions remained silent. Local politicians wrung their hands. With protests continuing, the school shut its gates and told pupils to stay at home.On Thursday, a Muslim charity, Purpose of Life, named the teacher and, in supposedly warning against violence, legitimised and incited it by equating the actions of the teacher with terrorism and the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar. Now the teacher, with his wife and four young children, is in hiding, hoping to avoid the fate of Samuel Paty, the teacher beheaded in France last October.Such fear is hardly misplaced. Asian youths have been seen peering through windows and trying the doors of his abandoned home. “If one teacher can do it,” said Adil Shahzad, a local imam, “another teacher can, and we do not want this to be the case. Otherwise we are not responsible for the actions of some individuals.” If the school does not “do the right thing”, he warned, Britain risks becoming like France.You might think that intimidation of teachers, and the threat of violence if society does not accept a de facto blasphemy law, is a clear-cut issue. But no. Labour made the right noises about intimidation, but praised the school for its “swift response”, or in other words surrendering to intimidation by suspending the teacher and apologising before investigating what happened.Sayeeda Warsi, a Conservative peer, insists “this is a child safeguarding issue”. She argues that the teacher’s use of the drawings led to “Islamophobic discourse” and Muslim children already suffer Islamophobic bullying. This is, of course, beside the point, which is whether the teacher was right – and within his rights – to use examples of alleged blasphemy in a lesson about blasphemy. Warsi, and others, seem to believe that the teacher should not have used the drawings. But neither the law nor government guidance prohibits their use.The most that can be said is we are dealing with a double paradox. First, we might have the freedom to depict Mohammed in drawings, but we might also have a responsibility not to do so. But second, once the teacher used the drawings, we had a responsibility to defend his right to do so.But even this argument raises questions. First, how do we teach about blasphemy – a hugely relevant subject in a diverse and pluralistic society – without using examples of blasphemy? Would we censor the use of anti-Semitic cartoons while teaching about Nazi Germany? Or cuttings depicting the Pope as the Whore of Babylon in lessons about the Reformation? And second, why is it “responsible” to avoid using depictions of Mohammed? If the responsible thing is always to avoid offence, we would avoid discussing all manner of subjects, from abortion to atheism. We would cease to be a truly free society. We say it is the responsible thing because we fear the backlash, from within Muslim communities more than any other.This is because of the threat of violence, however cleverly or opaquely worded, from preachers and hate preachers, shady organisations and street thugs. Experience tells us such violence is common. But it is also because Islamists are using the norms, rules and fashions of liberal democracy to attack liberal, democratic principles. They have large parts of the public sector and civil society on the run.Liberals are concerned about racism, so hardliners protect themselves by labelling any criticism they face, or policies they dislike, as racist. School uniform rules banning hijabs in primaries, for example, or the counter-terrorism Prevent strategy, supposedly target Muslims and are therefore racist.The proposed definition of Islamophobia, which would prohibit criticism of people not on the basis of what they immutably are, but what they choose to believe, is even better for hardliners. It allows extremists to police thought and speech. Criticism of Islamism, unsurprisingly, is said by the definition to be a “constitutive part” of Islamophobia.The fashion for identity politics is manipulated, with female spokesmen giving organisations that tolerate extremism an apparently moderate face. The right to protest is used to justify intimidation, and the right to self-expression used to undermine the self-expression of others. The public sector duty to consult, and desire to be inclusive, is used to win legitimacy and authority for extreme organisations, many of which engage routinely with local government and public services.And the results are clear. Purpose of Life, the charity that named the teacher, lists West Yorkshire Police and the NHS as partner organisations, as well as Mend, a notorious organisation accused of extremism. Despite a supposed ban on central government engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain, some departments, recently even a minister, continue to work with them.Inside government and out, officials fear accusations of Islamophobia. The National Education Union has failed to defend the Yorkshire teacher, but its general secretary was happy to share a platform with Tahir Alam, instigator of the Trojan Horse plot and banned from schools in England, at events telling parents that Trojan Horse was a government conspiracy.Elsewhere, the police are considering replacing terms like “Islamist terrorism” with euphemistic language, after secret consultations with groups they refuse to name. Notoriously, in countless child-grooming scandals the police and local authorities failed to act because, in the words of the Rotherham inquiry, they were “inhibited by the fear of affecting community relations”.In all these cases and others, we are failing thanks to fear, naivety and cynical complicity. We are facing hardliners who want to define Islam in line with their own extremist beliefs, control public thought and conscience, and use our pluralistic values in order to destroy them. In Yorkshire and elsewhere, the danger is looking us straight in the face. It is time to stop being afraid.Related TopicsThe Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our.You need to be a subscriber to join the conversation. Find out more.Show commentsAdvertisementRelated TopicsWe rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism.We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future.Thank you for your support.Need help?Visit ourpage.Close

Everyone is afraid, and nobody admits it. After a teacher in Yorkshire used a drawing of the Prophet Mohammed to teach a lesson about blasphemy, angry Muslims gathered outside his school. The teacher was suspended. The school pre-empted its own inquiry, and apologised. The teaching unions remained silent. Local politicians wrung their hands. With protests continuing, the school shut its gates and told pupils to stay at home.On Thursday, a Muslim charity, Purpose of Life, named the teacher and, in supposedly warning against violence, legitimised and incited it by equating the actions of the...

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Nick Timothy

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Batley’s hardliners are winning by exploiting Britain’s liberal principles

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