I also think you could show a Swastika in a class. Pretty sure no one finds that offensive?
Prophet Muhammad cartoon sparks Batley Grammar School protest
- Thread starter esmufc07
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I dont think its an attack on the freedom of religion and non muslims, but lets say i do.
Its still so unnecessary to show it. It dont serve any purpose and one can easily get their point across on the subjects without using the drawings or pictures. Like you just did.
Edit : And to put in "claim to be offended" is just belittling imo. They probably are offended for real.
Reservation for that my english is not that good so i could be misunderstanding the sentence.
Could you elucidate? We were shown all the cartoons of JP and Charlie Hebdo that were considered relevant to the discussion, including the jewish ones, Christian ones and the ones they frequently made of politicians.
I was clearly talking about the people who pose threats to this teacher not the children.
But why isolate the Muslim students by forcing them to make a call in front of their peers on whether to leave class? Especially when showing the cartoons offers no value to the discussion. In fact given the nature of some of the cartoons, it actively taints the discussion. How does any of that facilitate a good learning environment? He's quite literally going out of his way to make it more difficult for the Muslim students to engage with the discussion in the same way as their peers.
It's not radical. It's asking them to not because it's offensive. Protesting is not radical. Asking for sensitivity around a subject is not radical.
I disagree with that. I believe the cartoons in and of themselves are important.
You are looking at the issue as if the most important lesson is teaching people how not to offend or be offended.
I see the most important issue as teaching people to challenge their own beliefs and the power and danger of religious taboo. I think this can and should be done without offending anyone but also that it shouldn't be avoided for fear of upsetting anyone who has been given the opportunity not to be offended, but has chosen to be so anyway.
You cannot teach the dangers of religious taboo by talking about a cartoon that you are not allowed to show for fear of religious outrage. Not without leaving the impression that religious discretion is more important than freedom of expression.
In RE at a high school?
Context is important here surely?
What I was taught and discussed at school and college were different and appropriate in one setting over another.
Loads of people find the Swastika offensive. But you didn't say 'it's a cartoon ffs in a class' you simply said it's a cartoon. Which totally misses the point.
We definitely had discussions about religious satirical cartoons in our High School yes. Always were very valuable and interesting discussions. We even had satirical cartoons in our exams in which you should discuss them and place them in historical context.
It’s not offensive in a class about nazism.
It's not comparable as that would be tolerating intolerance. There's a value to LGBT rights being taught, it erodes a societal harm. Religion doesn't top a hierarchy of when we should respect others rights and way of life.
When a belief can be accommodated into an atheist society without any real detriment other than angering people who demand the right to offend then of course we should. We also largely do exactly that, this specific case should be no different.
What was the subject you were studying/discussing this in?
CH have a history of having to remove certain cartoons and Sine was an artist who was sacked for his comment on Sarkozys son. Yes the sarkozy who later believed in freedom of speech for CH
Here's another novel idea. How about religious people just stop being religious and following ancient beliefs and live in the twenty-first century instead. Or, since this is not going to happen in the near future, we at least stop putting religion on the same shelf as race or sexuality as you have just done and thus exempting it from scrutiny. Those are things you are born with and should never be discriminated against or treated differently for. Whereas religion belongs with communism, libertarianism, nihilism, vegetarianism or any other -ism you can choose to follow and should be treated as such.
It was a symbol of peace
I'm not saying that the majority of muslims are extremists, but there are enough of them for these issues to become contentious around the world in the 21st century again and again, and of course that's why these minor things can become so explosive.
Still is in it's non-nazi usage. I think the orientation is reversed though.
Who takes a class exclusively about Nazism in high school?
That is a class you take in university, and most likely a class you CHOOSE to take.
Actually it would be pretty strange to have history lessons on WW2 without coming across the swastika.
Agreed. I was in 6th form college (aged 16-18) when the Danish cartoons came out. I was studying my A Levels back then and we discussed them in our Law class, as we were discussing Human Rights, which was one of the compulsory modules. None of the pictures were shown, and everyone had a mature discussion about them. That too, in a class primarily made up of Atheists and maybe some Christians, with around 3 or so Muslims.
Showing the pictures was so unnecessary, especially in a setting like a school in West Yorkshire with a mixed, but not necessarily fully integrated population (I come from a very similar area, and Batley itself is only 30 or mins from my parents home by car) is irresponsible in the extreme and I would have massive doubts about the teacher's suitability to the profession. If he isn't professional enough to keep his personal feelings away from conducting his job and giving children the best possible educational outcomes, then I dread to think what he's like out of hours. I work in an environment where I don't fully mesh with my colleagues on certain matters, but that doesn't stop me from being pleasant with them and I don't go out of my way to enflame tensions, why couldn't this feck nugget do the same?
What are the odds that we're going to find out who he is and he's going to transition into a career as one of those contrarian, New Atheist, 'shock-jock'-lite/YouTuber twats like Sargon of the Akkad?
We had similar but not in RE. So a media module I did looked at using sexuality to sell a product. In my case it was covers of books (novels) with sultry women when the content wasn't related.
Also I think context again is important. Satire cartoons wouldn't have been those that had caused the kind of coverage the Muhammad cartoons had.
When doing Sociology at college we probably would have addressed it had it been an issue then
Could you not view the demand that religion is making of an educational institution ‘bullying’ as well, trying to force a will onto them?
Why not discuss something that actually occurred in modern history & learn from it as opposed to pretending it didn’t exist? It would be ludicrous to think that the only times we hear of educational institutions discussing the cartoons is when there is a backlash of varying degrees. It occurs with some regularity. You can discuss tragic events in context to encourage debate. It doesn’t have to be a zero sum exercise.
Of course you will learn about the holocaust/nazism in school and inevitably see a swastika.
It's not the same issue though as there is no religious claim not to display it.
Images and their meaning exist within the context they're displayed.
I mean, there's 7.2 billion people in the world, probably over 60% of that number are attached to a religion of some sort. How would you go around asking them to 'just stop being religious'?
Also, people are born into their religion all the time. It's as part of their identity.
I'm glad you brought up vegetarians as an example. If I'm hosting a dinner party and I know there could be vegans or vegetarians, would I exclusively serve non-veg options just because I don't believe in vegetarianism? That's showing respect to their way of life.
The other examples are more political so not really relevant outside of political conversations.
Yeah I'm just saying showing a cartoon or making a joke about a religion isn't crossing over into any offensive territory.
That's fair.
Again this is far removed from the context of discussing free speech and tolerance, by going all the way to Charlie Hebdo.
I forget which classes it was, but the topic was changed to free speech because the cartoon crisis was going on whilst we were at school in Denmark. I don't remember if we covered Sine. We weren't taught to believe that Charlie Hebdo was always in the right on all things and all times, we were discussing the explosive reaction to these cartoons and the nature of free speech itself.
Because you say so?
Because it's common fecking sense.
History Class then. We certainly had nazi symbols explained in our history books at high school.
Post pics or it didn't happen.
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So you're saying the condition and life of muslims in the UK currently is same as that of jews under nazi germany? Get a fecking grip.
There's no need to swear.
The point you're missing is it's not for us to dictate what massive demographics can take offence to or not. We don't have that right.
Using your logic, the N word wouldn't be offensive to black people because it's just a word.
The Swastika sprayed across buildings wouldn't be offensive to Jews because it's just a few lines.
We don't get to decide what others fine offence to. Have a little understanding.
For more than 1.5 billion people around the world, (and probably just as many who aren't Muslims) not showing the cartoons was, and I quote, "common fecking sense".
Don’t you think ‘offensive’ cartoons have taken society further in history? Why would a religion be excluded from satirical cartoons just because they deem it offensive. That’s religious oppression of other person’s individual freedom which is exactly why those satirical cartoons are so valuable.
Being offended shouldn’t exclude you from criticism.
I believe WW2 and the holocaust is completely mandatory education in nearly all schools in the western world.
I agree it would be tolerating intolerance. And by shying away from teaching certain subjects because a group may find them offensive we would be tolerating religious blasphemy codes and the idea that religion should have any say in how a secular society runs.
We shouldn't have to pick and choose what religious beliefs we will choose to give in to. In this case the Muslims that complained about LGBT rights should not be appeased but the ones that dislike the cartoons should be? Do we decide on a case by case basis? Its the same religion after all.
It is most definitely to the detriment to our society if we shy away from discussing things for fear of causing offence or worse. People have been killed due to the drawing of cartoons. We don't overcome such dangerous ideology by just not speaking about it.
That sentence hurts my brain (admittedly doesn’t take much).
Discuss it all you want, i think we should too. Probably more often than we do.
We can clearly discuss it without showing the drawings and thats my point. Not that we should not discuss it at all.