Mick Hartley

Ben Sixsmith at The Critic:

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.

Nothing like that had happened, of course. But, as with blasphemy accusations in Pakistan, these things tend to get blown up and exploited for partisan – Islamist – reasons.

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….

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.

Will there be any repercussions for Labour councillor Usman Ali, stirring it up so brazenly? Steerpike in the Spectator:

A Labour councillor suggesting a pupil be criminalised? Are the blasphemy laws now back? That wasn’t one of Sir Keir’s five missions…

Mr S asked Labour for whether Ali would be condemned for his comments and if the party whip would be withdrawn. The party declined to provide a response to multiple requests – though the tweet of his statement was deleted after The Spectator got in touch last night. Funny that.