Prophet Muhammad cartoon sparks Batley Grammar School protest

shamans

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Coming from a country that has a horrendous legacy of religious conservatism that we’re only just coming out of (with a shitload of ongoing hurt to deal with) it’s maddening for me to see excuses being made for religious fundamentalists throwing their weight around at schools.
What excuses? who are you talking about? If anything it's the opposite.

A teacher was being either dumb or purposefully a twat by sharing offensive cartoons to children. It is offensive as it ridicules their religious belief on many levels. Simple as that. All I see on this thread is so called "liberals" parading the old free speech narrative. It's hypocrisy.
 

shamans

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Not just on the caf. Although that’s presumably because Christians historically have had more privilege. So people are more willing to step up and defend those as they see lacking in privilege. Which is fair enough really.

Although I always find it weird that they’re willing to go in to bat for a religion with elements that are so at odds with progressive politics and that hasn’t matured and become more tolerant to the same extent as Christianity. There has to be some cognitive dissonance involved.
You're being naive or have your head deep in the sand.

Gee I wonder why folks who have a tendency to stand up for rights stand up for muslims. Maybe it's because your average muslims experience, especially in the west, is nothing compared to being a hard lined christian? Muslim kid are bullied on the regular from school till college till even the work force (yes that's no exaggeration).

Especially since 9/11 being muslim has you locked in as a target. I'm sorry the uighuirs arent christians and it's not the same. What a weird way to look at it.
 

bosnian_red

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I'm much more uneasy with the idea of faith schools and teaching everything through the prism of religion - that sounds pretty horrendous.

Any curriculum that doesn't include information about the world's major religions somewhere - the history, the practices, the beliefs of their adherents etc - isn't preparing students for life in the real world. Ignorance breeds fear. None of that has any place in a science lesson, though.
It includes information about it to small degrees, but not much. But generally I disagree anyway. If it's treated as just something for people to talk about and do in their own private time outside of school, I think it's more likely it becomes just something private and a small topic that they do for themselves if they want, and not this big deal topic that it has been for a long time. It is of course, but it shouldn't be part of anything meaningful in the real world. It should be something people do on their own and keep to themselves. It shouldn't have any influence ever in whether you are going to be friends with a certain person, it shouldn't ever come up in any employment position, and it shouldn't come up in important matters of health or politics. It's like personal relationships. Nobody should care about who somebody else is fecking, and nobody should care about what somebody else's spiritual faith is.
 

calodo2003

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What excuses? who are you talking about? If anything it's the opposite.

A teacher was being either dumb or purposefully a twat by sharing offensive cartoons to children. It is offensive as it ridicules their religious belief on many levels. Simple as that. All I see on this thread is so called "liberals" parading the old free speech narrative. It's hypocrisy.
So, we’ve lost our ‘liberal’ card over this? What are we now?
 

shamans

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Edit: yep, just saw in The Guardian (after reading 4 or 5 major stories that didn’t include that context) that it was a religious studies lesson.

Context definitely matters here. As a high school social studies teacher, I teach about all kinds of controversial topics - and political cartoons are something we frequently use because they’re part of the standards and required curriculum... including cartoons that are controversial. It’s part of the freedom to teach you’re supposed to have as an education professional.
Context does matter. This was in UK in an area with a high percentage of Muslims. I wonder if you would be willing to show historical, offensive caricatures of Martin Luther King that have been made by KKK members? Purely for education?
 

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This is in Canada, and the Catholic schools are mainly public here. They also tend to be the best public schools, though, which is why several non-Christians attend those schools.
Catholic schools are seperate from public schools in Canada. They have their own school boards.
 

shamans

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So, we’ve lost our ‘liberal’ card over this? What are we now?
I don't know. Plenty of such fair-whether liberals though. Not my job to label but it's funny to see how same folk who champion all sorts of minority rights as long as its in their benefit change town so quickly just because of their hate for religion.
 

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I don't know. Plenty of such fair-whether liberals though. Not my job to label but it's funny to see how same folk who champion all sorts of minority rights as long as its in their benefit change town so quickly just because of their hate for religion.
Okay.

When did it become zero sum all of a sudden?

Do the contortions hurt?
 

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I don't know. Plenty of such fair-whether liberals though. Not my job to label but it's funny to see how same folk who champion all sorts of minority rights as long as its in their benefit change town so quickly just because of their hate for religion.
Surely it’s liberal to allow a cartoon to be drawn and shown? How can you spin that as not liberal? This truly is next level insanity.

The religious fanatics who don’t want cartoons to be drawn are the real liberals?
 

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This is the sort of comment you'd find on Trump groups with thousands of upvotes and likes. Enjoy your company.
I've told you, I'm not an American dude. I suppose you live there. Enjoy your company.
 

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Not sure how true it is but I was told the issue is a little messier than we know via the papers thus far.

One of the "stories" is that there were 2 members of staff involved. 1 of whom made some comments that were interpreted as racist/islamophobic/derogatory. Then there was mr Denville who delivered the lesson.

Seems one guy is distraught and apologetic the other not so much.

The guy in this clip is talking about the collective but we think he is talking about the one member of staff, as we only are aware of it being one teacher.

Not saying he is right, looks to be playing to the camera a bit, but just putting it out there that there maybe more to the whole story than simply cartoons and RE
 

shamans

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Okay.

When did it become zero sum all of a sudden?

Do the contortions hurt?
It's no contortion. It's the same posters going against the exact opposite of their usual logic just because of the subject matter. Replace the subject with another object that they themselves affiliate with and it would be different.
 

calodo2003

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It's no contortion. It's the same posters going against the exact opposite of their usual logic just because of the subject matter. Replace the subject with another object that they themselves affiliate with and it would be different.
So when did it become zero sum?
 

shamans

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I've told you, I'm not an American dude. I suppose you live there. Enjoy your company.
Doesn't matter. Trump follows, Geert Wilders followers etc. They all have the same mentality. "Oh so there's no free speech??" That day a woman called a guy the N word and the comments were filled with such trash.

Seriously, just say I hate Islam and at least you're honest with yourself then.
 

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It's no contortion. It's the same posters going against the exact opposite of their usual logic just because of the subject matter. Replace the subject with another object that they themselves affiliate with and it would be different.
Do you really think that? Doesn’t seem the case to me? You can draw a cartoon of every subject you like af far as I’m concerned. Be my guest. It’s a free society.
 

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This is the sort of comment you'd find on Trump groups with thousands of upvotes and likes. Enjoy your company.
This is very unfair. That would be the same as saying your comments put you in the company of people that behead other people.
 

Gehrman

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Doesn't matter. Trump follows, Geert Wilders followers etc. They all have the same mentality. "Oh so there's no free speech??" That day a woman called a guy the N word and the comments were filled with such trash.

Seriously, just say I hate Islam and at least you're honest with yourself then.
I think it's in line with the liberal spirit to critize profoundly iliberal religions. I also have nothing to do with Geert Wilders. I don't actually like Allah, Muhammed or Islam. I've repeated that several times. That doesn't mean I have problem with decent and innocent muslims or their right to practice their religion peacefully or wish them harm.
 

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Speaking as Muslim bloke from the area, with plenty of family/connections in Batley... This whole thing is total bullshit. Absolutely zero need for a protest - the school was dealing with the issue and the community just fine - and most folk that I've spoken to just wish they hadn't.... Blown this whole thing out of proportion by doing so.
 

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Who said it did
One deviance in a stance in your view makes us wrong. You can show us how we are being against our usual logic. Defined by whom? Does this mean we are less liberal?

Not everything deserves hyperbole.
 

bosnian_red

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See stuff like this annoys me. All well and good to be offended by the use of the cartoon, IMO shouldn't be used as I don't see any educational value. But why start bringing the entire educational curriculum and sex Ed and all that into this. Religion shouldn't mix with any of that. It should only ever be brought into the picture for history lessons, and then left there. There is literally no other benefit for blending it into any other topic and it'll only cause further divide and weaken your own case by trying to push the other topics. A mixture of the "I don't trust the government" folk and the "God will save me" folk are the reason why there is any sort of skepticism and debate about vaccines right now with covid too. It's dumb. Politics and religion have 0 impact on the science behind a vaccine, and that logic should extent to a lot of subjects within school.
 

shamans

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Do you really think that? Doesn’t seem the case to me? You can draw a cartoon of every subject you like af far as I’m concerned. Be my guest. It’s a free society.
I'm not the sort of guy to do it but I assure you there are cartoons/form of media that would offend other groups as well. With cartoons in this case its worse because drawings of religious figures are very taboo in Islam. Drawings of Jesus in Christianity for instance are not. Even so, it's possible.

It is not a free society when you marginalize a minority and for the sake of it provoke to achieve nothing. We often laugh at conservatives who say "special snowflakes" and all that but what now suddenly we are not supposed to have respect for each other in a society?

I obviously do not agree with any bad action towards it but these folks started protesting. Are you saying they can't do that now? They don't have the right to even be offended?

This is very unfair. That would be the same as saying your comments put you in the company of people that behead other people.
Which comment is that? The people that behead do not say anything close to what I say. The idea of "free speech. Not my loss if it hurts you" is very Trumpian.
 

shamans

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One deviance in a stance in your view makes us wrong. You can show us how we are being against our usual logic. Defined by whom? Does this mean we are less liberal?

Not everything deserves hyperbole.
The "deviance" is literally going against a stance you formerly stood on claiming to believe in it on principal. It's no longer a principal stance then if you so easily break it for things you dislike.
 

calodo2003

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The "deviance" is literally going against a stance you formerly stood on claiming to believe in it on principal. It's no longer a principal stance then if you so easily break it for things you dislike.
Dear christ, didn’t realize there was such a severe purity test administered.

No one’s ‘so easily breaking’ anything. My god.
 

shamans

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I think it's in line with the liberal spirit to critize profoundly iliberal religions. I also have nothing to do with Geert Wilders. I don't actually like Allah, Muhammed or Islam. I've repeated that several times. That doesn't mean I have problem with decent and innocent muslims or their right to practice their religion peacefully or wish them harm.
It would be in the liberal spirit, or how I understand it in todays world anyway, to stand for marginalized groups and what offends them. Just because you do not understand something or agree with it doesn't mean they have to see it your way.

Something was taught in class. That offends a lot of people. They voiced it. What's your solution to it? It shouldn't offend you or if it serves no purpose we will not do it (or at least have a waiver that class will be about these subjects so don't attend if you don't want to).
 

shamans

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Dear christ, didn’t realize there was such a severe purity test administered.

No one’s ‘so easily breaking’ anything. My god.
I am not the one talking about tests but you keep pushing me for some technical answer as to what makes this stance not a liberal one. It's pretty obvious.
 

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@shamans You seem to think that criticism of Islam is the same as hating Islam. There is a vast difference between ‘criticizing’Islam like cnuts as Wilders do or profound religious criticism. The one thing is very liberal the other thing is bigotry. To put the people who rightfully criticize Islam in here in the same basket as Wilders and Trump that’s unfair. Just as it would be unfair to put you in a basket with the people who pose the death threats. That’s what I meant.

There is nothing wrong with protesting there is something wrong with trying to impose religious fanatism on the curriculum and calling for people to be prosecuted.
 

calodo2003

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I am not the one talking about tests but you keep pushing me for some technical answer as to what makes this stance not a liberal one. It's pretty obvious.
One can be a liberal & still believe the cartoon should be allowed to be shown in the appropriate classroom environment.
 

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One can be a liberal & still believe the cartoon should be allowed to be shown in the appropriate classroom environment.
It’s actually very liberal to think so. Banning of cartoons is very conservative.
 

shamans

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@shamans You seem to think that criticism of Islam is the same as hating Islam. There is a vast difference between ‘criticizing’Islam like cnuts as Wilders do or profound religious criticism. The one thing is very liberal the other thing is bigotry. To put the people who rightfully criticize Islam in here in the same basket as Wilders and Trump that’s unfair. Just as it would be unfair to put you in a basket with the people who pose the death threats. That’s what I meant.

There is nothing wrong with protesting there is something wrong with trying to impose religious fanatism on the curriculum and calling for people to be prosecuted.
No I am not confusing the two. But sometimes, critiques hide behind "we are just criticizing" shield to push their agenda against Islam. That agenda can be all the way to hate to just not wanting practicing muslims in the west.

Genuine criticism happens all the time. This idea that criticism of Islam is met with instant death from most of muslim population is crazy. As I said before universities here have high level classes here discussing Islam in detail and criticizing every aspect of it. I have not heard of a single person protest that because it's educational and a free society to critique.

Even online on forums and the internet there are so many discussion board criticizing Islam. No one has a problem.

That's totally different than what happened here. At the very least, if the teacher was so interested in this important life lesson why could he not have warned the students beforehand or made them sign a wavier that they'll be discussing topics that are offensive to the muslim community so please do not show up?

EDIT: If you want to criticize Islam, no one has ever stopped you in any democratic modern western state.