Robert Jenrick@RobertJenrick
Five years ago today, a teacher from Batley Grammar showed a class a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed.
Within days, a hundred Islamists were protesting outside the school gates.
Outrageously, the teacher was suspended. The headteacher, Gary Kibble, apologised ‘unequivocally’. It was an astonishing act of appeasement and cowardice.
The teacher was then subjected to a campaign of abuse and intimidation, including incitement to violence against him and his family. His kids had to miss school for months. They slept on mattresses in temporary accommodation.
An independent probe later cleared him of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Another report likewise found that the school, council and police all ‘totally and utterly failed’ him.
Too late - his life was changed forever.
Have lessons been learnt from this shameful episode?
I fear exactly the same thing would happen today.
In fact ‘advice’ has recently been reissued by Labour councils including the one covering Batley, that children’s drawings in art lessons may be seen as ‘idolatrous’ under sharia law.
Teachers are even warned that dance lessons could cause parental concerns over ‘physical contact between males and females’.
Extremism is being mainstreamed. A climate of threatening and intimidatory harassment is poisoning our institutions. It's antithetical to our democratic way of life.
Most of our governing class are simply too spineless to take on Islamists.
Look at when I highlighted the chronic failure of integration in parts of Birmingham. I was denounced. And then proven right by West Midlands Police’s admission that violent Islamists living couldn’t be prevented from attacking Jewish football fans. The Police lied and blamed the visiting supporters in an effort to pretend they still had authority in the city.
And now look at the reaction of the Prime Minister and much of the media to criticisms of a segregated Iftar in Trafalgar Square. They branded critics racist too. This was despite the Prime Minister himself pulling out of an Iftar in 2021 organised by the very same man, Omar Salha, who arranged this one, apparently because of his Islamist links.
We’ve been led by weak hypocrites, who cover up, rather than confront what’s happening. The country is sliding down a dark path as a result.
But innocent men and women like the Batley teacher are the greatest victims of extremism, and too many seem intent to forget them.
We must defend them and stand up for all those who speak out.
