The UK School System Empowers Islamist Extremists
Four students have been suspended for unintentional minor damages to an English translation of the Quran
A picture of the “damaged” Quran
A local UK Labour Party Councillor released a statement few days ago regarding an alleged blasphemy case in a high school in the English city Wakefield, where he described the event in a now-deleted tweet as "a serious provocative action which needs to be dealt with urgently by all the authorities" and a terrible action that "could destroy all the good progress that has been made in Wakefield to highlight and tackle Islamophobia." The provocative and terrible action being what he considered a Quran that "has been desecrated." What actually happened in Wakefield was a minor damage to an English translation of the Quran where some of the pages were smudged with dirt, and there was no malicious intent from anyone involved. This is neither provocative nor terrible, I saw actually damaged Islamic textbooks involving classical Arabic texts from the Quran during my time studying in the schools of an Islamic country and I don't remember it ever causing a controversy in the class, let alone an entire political controversy, a security issue, and a discussion on whether it requires a Muslim public demonstration at the school. This was a different story in the liberal democracy of the UK, so-called community leaders and the police had to be involved, the latter were involved not in order to take action against the extremists sending death threats to the students, but instead they were there to investigate the degree of the minor damages caused to the Quran. Four students were suspended from the school, not for sending death threats or for religious extremism, but for unintentionally failing to treat the Quran "with the respect it should have." Among them was a 14-year-old "highly autistic" boy who brought the Quran to school, and his non-Muslim mother had to be present in a mosque hearing while covering her hair, as shows a recorded video where only men can be seen except her, and sitting next to another local Councillor who says her son was rightfully expelled and that his mother feels remorse. The non-Muslim mother had to take lessons about tolerance because of the unintentional actions of her boy with autism regarding a book that she doesn't personally believe in its holiness, and the lessons were taken in the same mosque that invited a Pakistani Quran reciter who can be seen in a resurfaced screenshot of a Facebook post supporting the assassination of Pakistani politician Salman Taseer. Salman Taseer was killed by his bodyguard because of simply opposing, as a politician, Pakistan's blasphemy law that sentences people to death. The meaning of tolerance and the consequences of intolerance are being completely reversed. The intolerant, fanatical, extremist, close-minded, and arguably also ableist so-called community leaders are the ones teaching tolerance, all in the name of combating the vaguely defined "Islamophobia."
The recent situation in Wakefield is outrageous in itself, and unfortunately it is also not an isolated event. A teacher was suspended in 2021 from his school in Batley for showing his students a drawing from the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, he faced Muslim protests and received death threats, and he is still hiding until this day due to a serious fear for his life. Despite the fact that an investigation showed no malicious intentions from his part, he didn't get institutional support against the extremists attacking him. Instead, the UK school system bowed to the Islamists and used its own power to further punish the target of extremism just like it did with the teenagers of Wakefield. New Humanist reports that religious groups have a power in deciding the syllabus of Religious Education so it ends up being religious apologetics instead of challenging the students to think in ways about religion different from how their parents have indoctrinated them. In the past, some schools in the UK were found to be using very extremist Saudi textbooks, which were also officially adopted by ISIS in 2014 to teach children in the schools of the territories it controlled. While the Department for Education now insists on teaching "British values" in schools, writer Emma Park argues in New Humanist that these same values, including "mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs," are interpreted in way that enforces intolerant rules against blasphemy in schools, as was the case in Batley where "British values" were cited word by word and ended up reaching a conclusion supporting a ban of any material considered blasphemous in school. The UK school system that gives a power to the so-called community leaders, some of them promoting Pakistan's national obsession with blasphemy and violent intolerance towards religious dissidents, is widely different from the strictly secular public school system and the heavily regulated private schools of France, but the UK is obviously not a fan of institutional secularism in France. The press of the UK had a meltdown when French President Emmanuel Macron supported the actual victims of intolerance instead of reversing the roles and apologising to the extremists. The law against separatism in France that Macron supported has concrete measures against all types of religious extremism, it reinforces the role of the French school system and also takes measures to prevent the infiltration of extremists in associations and foundations, the latter is a very important measure especially when we consider that Islamist philanthropists played a central role in the rise of movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood both in the MENA and in the West as shows the author Tarek Osman in his book "Islamism: What it Means for the Middle East and the World." Such measures in France were also moderate, the French far-right notably refused to support them because they target all types of extremists and not just Islamists. In recent years, several attacks have been carried out in the UK against individuals for blasphemy or apostasy, some of these attacks were deadly. It is clear that action is needed in the UK as well and not just in France, it can take concrete and moderate measures now, or it can wait for the issue to keep getting worse until a racist populist uses the fear of people to take power and try authoritarian and counter-productive measures instead. Until then, the UK can enjoy being supposedly pro-Muslim with the Church of England having systemic advantages over all religions, but at least it's not like the Islamophobic France with its institutional secularism enforcing strict equality between all religious people and non-religious people.
Actual hell world
This story is so bizarre. I work and teach in the Middle East and see tens of copies of the Quran in various states of disrepair everyday. Utterly bizarre.