On 25 March this year, an angry crowd of largely young male protesters massed at the gates of Batley Grammar School, chanting and demanding the dismissal of an RE teacher for showing a controversial cartoon in class – probably a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, first published in Jyllands-Posten in 2005 and reprinted in Charlie Hebdo the following year. “We know what these images have caused in France . . . and we know from that how insulting they can be to a Muslim,” one of the protesters, a young man in a hood and face mask, told ITV News.
Shortly afterwards, the head teacher, Gary Kibble, said in a statement that “the school unequivocally apologises for using a totally inappropriate image . . . The member of staff has also relayed their most sincere apologies . . . It’s important for children to learn about faiths and beliefs, but this must be done in a respectful, sensitive way.” A speech by Mohammed Amin Pandor, a local imam, which was caught on video by The Telegraph, seemed to suggest that the protesters had succeeded in having the wording of Kibble’s statement amended to be more apologetic. The head also confirmed that the offending material had been withdrawn, and promised an independent investigation. The school later confirmed that the purpose of the investigation would be to “examine how certain materials, which caused offence, came to be used in a Religious Studies lesson at Batley Grammar”. The frame of reference was clearly designed to appease the protesters.
In the meantime, a charity called Purpose of Life published the teacher’s name – let us call him “Mr A” – on social media. The Muslim Action Forum accused him of “inciting hatred and Islamophobia whilst pushing forward extremist white supremacist ideology,” and claimed that showing caricatures of Muhammad would “inevitably offend and provoke the feelings of 1.6 billion Muslims.” The Muslim Council of Britain claimed that “according to parents at the school, the cartoons created a hostile atmosphere and led to Islamophobic discourse and language,” though it provided no evidence to substantiate this.
Predictably, Mr A and his family received death threats; the Daily Mail reported that neighbours had seen “gangs of young men arriving at the property to look for him”. After spending two months in hiding, in late May he was cleared of malicious intentions following an investigation by the Batley Multi-Academy Trust.
However, the Trust concluded that “using the image did cause deep offence to a number of students, parents and members of the school community . . . the topics covered by the lesson could have been effectively addressed in other ways and without using the image.” Mr A may not have meant to offend, but offend he did, and in the view of the Trust, that was what mattered. It is not known what will now happen to him, but it is clear that he will never be able to teach at Batley again.
Religious Education
In all the public discussion of this case, there has been a conspicuous lacuna. As Caroline Fourest, a former Charlie Hebdo journalist, puts it: “I’m quite amazed that this teacher is still hiding . . . We don’t have his version; we don’t have his voice.” Not only has Mr A remained silent: virtually no teachers have spoken out in support of their colleague’s decision to teach the cartoon. The Batley case has raised specific issues to do with the way Islam is treated in this country and elsewhere. However, the principles involved can be applied to any religion, or any other ideology, whose representatives try to use their power to suppress criticism of their opinions in wider society and the education system. Arguably, it is vital for teachers to be able to use “blasphemous” materials, provided they do so in a productive way that involves all students and enables them to understand the reasons for doing so.
One reason for the teachers’ silence is down to the way that Religious Education (RE) is taught in Britain. The problem here is that RE is not taught as a normal academic subject under the National Curriculum. Instead, for historical reasons, religious groups continue to be involved in its syllabus and supervision; unsurprisingly, many RE teachers are also themselves religious. According to Mr B, an RE teacher at a secondary school in a deprived part of London, the large majority of teachers in his subject subscribe to the view that its purpose is to promote “tolerance and respect” about religions – as indicated by the name of the Facebook group “REspect”. But in Mr B’s view, this really means “religious apologetics . . . If someone mentions that a Christian racist or homophobe is influenced by his religion – no, no, no, you’re misrepresenting Christianity.”
Linda Woodhead, professor of religion at Lancaster University, also thinks the subject needs reform: “We’ve got to go away from this anodyne teaching of ‘everything is lovely about religion and it’s a great force for good’.” In the current climate, says Mr B, teachers of RE will never endorse the use of potentially offensive materials. “All the teachers that I work with share the same feelings.”
It is not just in RE departments that “blasphemous” material is likely to be avoided. When I was researching this article, I contacted seven teachers from as many secondary schools to ask if they would be willing to comment; only Mr B was. One teacher had argued publicly in favour of using the Charlie cartoons in the classroom, but withdrew their views after receiving threats of violence. It is not just the extremists, however, that teachers have to fear, but their own institutions. “Probably more than most people’s jobs [are] worth nowadays [to talk],” was a former colleague’s response. The way Gary Kibble and the Batley Trust have treated Mr A has set a concerning precedent for other schools whose staff wish to use resources that may offend people – in particular, vocal religious groups.
Free speech and responsibility
The Department for Education’s 2014 document on “British values” in schools lists “democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” This list could be interpreted both as supporting freedom of speech and as limiting it. The document, however, does not seem to anticipate the potential for conflict, or suggest how such conflict might be resolved. It was all too easy for Nick Gibb, Minister of State for School Standards, to state in a letter about Batley to the Muslim Action Forum that “Schools are free to include a full range of issues, ideas and materials in their curriculum, including where they are challenging or controversial . . . They must balance this with the need to promote respect and tolerance between people of different faiths and beliefs.”
With these words, Gibb washed his hands of the whole affair and gave the decision up to the school. This is shown by the ease with which the Batley Trust, in their summary, could cite the above quotation word for word, before reaching, in a few swift steps, the conclusion that “it is not necessary for staff to use the material in question to deliver the learning outcomes on the subject of blasphemy; or any such images . . . for use in any Trust RS lessons, or any other lessons.” The Trust, it declared, “is committed to ensuring that offence is not caused.” Thus there is now a blanket ban on all “blasphemous” material in all of its schools.
The response of the British intelligentsia was mostly divided along the usual lines. Commentators in the right-leaning media defended Mr A’s right to use the cartoons in the interest of free speech. However, among many on the left, while the threats of violence were condemned, there was a feeling that the teacher had gone too far. As Woodhead puts it, to say that “words can’t hurt” is “ridiculous. . . they can deeply shame and stigmatise and offend.” For her, like others, the principle of free speech has been hijacked by “white, privileged, middle class men . . . And they’re extremely angry at the thought that somebody is now saying in a tiny way, sorry, you can’t do exactly what you want.” She argues that Mr A’s use of the cartoons “showed incredible lack of sensitivity and judgement,” both because of the taboo on images of Muhammad, and because the cartoons associate him with violence.
On the day of the protests in Batley, the BBC published a whole article on “The issue of depicting the Prophet Muhammad”, which seemed to present the terror attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the French teacher Samuel Paty as consequences of their use of the cartoons. The article explained that in France, the issue of free speech “is particularly sensitive because secularism – or laïcité – is central to national identity.” It did not suggest that this was the case in Britain. Fourest’s experience of being interviewed by the BBC is telling. “When I see BBC on my phone,” she says, “I start to have even a physical reaction because I know that I’m going to be accused of being the source of all the problem, me and my friends and secularism.”
Criticising Islam
Demanding respect for a belief or practice has been a method of controlling people’s behaviour since time immemorial. That is, indeed, the whole point of the concept of blasphemy: that taking the name of one’s god in vain, or drawing Allah or his representative, or bowing down to graven images, disrespects a higher power, upsets the established order, and so is worthy of punishment. Blasphemy becomes a means of exerting power over others when religious organisations begin to enforce its taboos.
According to statistics compiled by the campaign group End Blasphemy Laws (EBL), there are surprisingly few countries where some form of blasphemy is not on the statute book. However, there are only eight countries where it still, at least in theory, carries the death penalty: Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Brunei. In all of these, Islam is the sole official religion, except for Nigeria, which is split between Islam and Christianity. In Pakistan, according to EBL, blasphemy laws “tend to target non-believers, religious minorities and dissenting Muslims . . . The mere accusation of blasphemy against someone can result in the accused’s life being endangered” – not by the state, but by an angry mob.
It is an uncomfortable fact that in the last two decades, several European journalists, as well as Samuel Paty and the film director Theo van Gogh, have been murdered on the grounds that they insulted Islam – in other words, for blasphemy. It is hard to tell what role fear plays in the British establishment’s tentative treatment of Islam today; but it must be there. For all its defence of the Batley teacher, not even the right-wing press republished the offending cartoon. It seems that those who threaten violence in the name of Islam have silenced criticism, as Fourest puts it, “more effectively than [with] the Kalashnikov, because the next people . . . are already afraid”.
To be clear: attacks and discrimination against Muslims in the UK, on whatever grounds, are just as much to be condemned as they would be against any other person. However, distinctions must be made. Attacks on Muslims are one thing; criticism of Islam is another. If no one can criticise anyone else’s beliefs, the possibility of intellectual progress is brought neatly to an end. Moreover, if incidents like Batley multiply, or if, as is more likely, teachers definitively cease to use “blasphemous” materials in the classroom, then we will, as the National Secular Society has pointed out, find our schools subject to a de facto blasphemy law.
Teaching offence
Practical difficulties aside, and assuming the support of the school, the question remains what positive value the Charlie cartoons or other “blasphemous” material, properly contextualised and explained, could bring to a lesson. One answer is that such material can draw the sting from invidious issues rather than leaving them to fester on social media.
Fiyaz Mughal, a liberal Muslim campaigner, remembers that when he was at school in London in the 1980s, his physics teacher paused the lesson for students to discuss the controversy over the newly published Satanic Verses and the fatwa against Rushdie. As the only Muslim in the class, Mughal at first felt “hurt” by the teacher’s move. “But I had my chance to say what I needed to say.” The teacher made it very clear that the book “was not an attack on Muslims . . . it was a discussion about social issues.”
Looking back, Mughal is “thankful” that the teacher exposed him to different views. “It got me to take on board that we could have a deeply divisive debate, but actually, in the end . . . I can still smile and say hello to those people who have had these kinds of discussions.” Consequently, he was better integrated into the class, and more open to liberal opinions as an adult.
It is only when students look at the “blasphemous” material itself that they can start to understand both its significance and its limitations – and perhaps see that it is less shocking than propagandists have claimed. The cartoon of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, for instance, is exaggerated, absurd, and drawn nearly 20 years ago in a specific context. Most teenagers can be encouraged to realise – if not prejudiced by adults in advance – that one caricature is not an accurate representation of all Muslims. They might also start to comprehend, even if they do not agree with, the reasons for publishing it, as a protest against fundamentalist censorship and violence.
In a lesson on free speech and blasphemy, could there be a better resource than a cartoon which has been used by its opponents to justify murder? Moreover, according to Fourest, the cartoon alludes to a Danish proverb that “an orange in the heart brings good luck”, and to the civil wars of the 1980s in Algeria between rival Muslim factions. That “old anarchist cartoonist”, Kurt Westergaard, was making the point that a bomb on the head brings bad luck to all concerned.
Mr A was well liked by his students, who put up a petition on change.org asking for his reinstatement. However, the authors of the petition seem to think that the purpose of showing the Muhammad cartoons was solely to “educate the future generations against racism” by showing “how disgusting it can truly be”. This is a disturbingly one-sided view. The students clearly need to consider these issues in greater depth: but who will guide them, now that the school has humiliated their teacher and banned his material?
If there is one thing that the academic study of religion should teach us, especially if taken with the study of history and literature, it is that the meaning of both sacred texts and profane cartoons is a matter of interpretation. Context, intention, audience all matter, as does the perspective of the reader. It is surely beneficial for society if all students can develop the critical faculties that will enable them to detach themselves emotionally and choose between differing interpretations, rather than relying on the say-so of a religious leader. Such exercises can prepare them for the quandaries of adult life, and build up resistance to the manipulations of social media. Unfortunately, for students in Batley and beyond, obtaining this kind of education has just become more difficult.
This article is from the New Humanist autumn 2021 edition. Subscribe today.
