Which scholars are you listening to?
Prophet Muhammad cartoon sparks Batley Grammar School protest
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
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I’d say that as a religious scholar, his influence has been limited to Shi’i circles. However as an Islamist it has at times reached across the sectarian divide, especially in the 1980s when many Sunni Islamists took inspiration from the Iranian Revolution.
Alright, I apologize. I know it must hurt you too that extremists want to hijack the Quran's messages.
If you don't talk about something, it obviously doesn't exist. Just like comrade Stalin said "there is a person, there is a problem". 
Yeah there was a period where his coming to power was seen by some as people wanting a return to a certain type of Islam. However it was short lived.
Just to add to what you said.
Even Qardawi changed his stance in 2009. But what is often not mentioned is that he didn't support suicide bombing completely. He categorized it.
So for example even in his 'its allowed days" he would have condemned 9/11 and 7/7.
In Islam there is two types of war. One is the type you get where one army fights another in a battlefield but it's not about occupation. Here the rules of war, in Islam, don't allow fighting outside established rules. So even chopping down trees is not allowed or polluting of water wells.
The second type is one of occupation. Here the general rule is you fight by whatever means to stop an occupying force. So you pollute the water if the enemy is affected by it, you chop down the trees so they have no cover or materials (just to add here the water and trees are not literal necessarily, as wars change and the need for materials change. So the "keep your horses ready" now would mean tanks or cars or planes).
Suicide here doesn't necessarily mean what we may think. It's more akin to suicide in the going over the top way, in WW1. And you don't retreat.
That's a very basic explanation, and I'm sure someone will pick bits, I'm not excusing likes of Qardawi or defending him. Just trying to apply context to the general principles.
Because everyone knows you don't do that, most people avoid doing it even in comedy because it's so offensive so any idiot who decides that a classroom is the appropriate place is probably a prick.
Is he only a prick if that class contains muslims? Like I said we did the whole thing in our class with all the cartoons and the purpose was not to stereotype muslims but to have a geniune debate on the nature of free speech. None in the class became Islam haters because of it.
So what do you think the educational value of this is then? I can understand why you would see those cartoons, they're historical documents from major points in history. The only lesson I can deduce from this is either that you have every right to be an offensive toe rag or that Muslims are lunatics. Am I missing anything?
I don't know. This thread is about a specific instance of a teacher using the cartoon in a professional capacity, and quite a few have talked about a general right to be offensive for the sake of being offensive, which is a legal right within limits in several countries. Assuming they care about the case at hand, I'd wager they believe the teacher has that right, without me claiming that it's a majority position by those believing that a teacher does have the right to use the material (a position I agree with, with some caveats).
Yeah, you’re missing the whole part where it was apparently a lesson about blasphemy. You can’t quite teach blasphemy if you can’t show examples of blasphemy.
You could always request a poll.
He probably knows this but his point will be that it's offensive to Muslims.
I both doubt my street cred and people's tendency to answer polls truthfully.
Could you not just say that drawing Muhhamad is very offensive and explain why? I don't remember any sociology teacher, or lecturer wandering in and dropping the N bomb to get the class started.
What is it, that you don't do? For example isn't it a good idea to use these as examples of satire and discussing about the pros and cons of the genre?
I know that it bothered no one in that context when our teacher used some of them.
If you are going to read books on racism, they will contain the N word and racial slurs. Just like Django Unchained is a film about slavery & racism, which uses the N word possibly more than any other film.
Oh yeah because that’s what’s happened here. Good to get your first hand account of the class that day.
He's an adult, he knows how offensive showing it is, he should do better. This is pretty black and white issue for me, if you know something's going to offend someone and it's not going to affect you either way, don't do it.
Would it be appropriate for a teacher to show that to class of kids?
You didn't answer my question. Could you for example use it to show the negatives of satire, you don't think that it has an educational value, that it may teach teenagers to do better?
Depends on the age of kids and since 2020 all of that is likely to get you fired no matter the context. Before that it would probably be less Incendiary. I think we managed to see Schindlers list about 3 times in primary school and it's not like watching a film about the holocaust is less offensive than a movie about racism.
Wouldn't the head of the school saying it was inappropriate suggest it was closer to this than what some people are putting forward?
I think this bit is getting ignored in all of the discussion. A lot of guesswork is going into what happened. It was a blasphemy class, it was most recent material so why not use it and so on. None of which is confirmed. What is confirmed is that the school have apologised unequivocally and stated clearly that it was inappropriate.
Actually this happened recently. Look up Adam Habib.
I would also like to point out that there exist Islamic paintings of Muhammad, his body and face, from about 700 years ago... and I know this because I had to teach about them in AP World History when I was teaching about Persia.
Somebody who makes a caricature about a known and obvious sensitive topic (prophet, Holocaust, etc.) is completely irresponsible.
The balance between risk (have some communities upset, protests) and return (make some intellectual hipsters smile) is ridiculous.
The balance between risk (have some communities upset, protests) and return (make some intellectual hipsters smile) is ridiculous.
Could also be the product of a head master shitting his pants because there’s a protest outside the gate of his school.
I did comment about that earlier, asking if it was that easy to not back a teacher with unions, HR and maybe other bodies getting involved.
However the fact is that an unequivocal apology and statement was made.
Also if I'm right then the protest wasn't instant. It seemed to gather pace after the school closed and pretty much finished by Friday afternoon.
Edit: reading some reports online the incident occurred on Monday the 22nd. The protests started on Thursday, if the Friday papers use of "second day of protest" is to go by.
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Obviously Samuel Paty wasn't playing on his mind. Neither is the fact that the teacher is in hiding and under police protection.
Well one thing that caught my attention in an article was "the caricatures were seen as offensive because they perceived to link Islam with terrorism".
It also had this mentioned:
"Sayeeda Warsi, a member of the House of Lords and former chairman for the ruling Conservative Party, said: “The suspended teacher should not be named, nor hounded, but the school should ask whether the issue of blasphemy could have been taught in a better way that didn’t necessitate the use of cartoons depicting Muslims wearing bomb turbans.”
If that's true, it changes the dynamics a bit, I think.
If the teacher was of the opinion that he wanted a more direct approach to understanding blasphemy, knowing the issues that surrounded this, surely he could have asked the parents or the Islamic students to relay to their parents the nature of what the lesson would contain as well as it's context. Then he would get an answer on whether it would cause an uproar or not.
Very simple things that can be avoided.
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Touched on this earlier as well. Not all muslims have stuck with the no drawings issue through the years. In fact I was asked to draw certain pictures in school during the Islam topic in RE. This would have been early to mid eighties.
So are people proposing a ban to "overtly offensive" cartoons and caricatures? I wonder how and who can actually say what is too offensive and what isn't.
I kind of know what to expect when seeing people comparing cartoons about the Holocaust and Muhammad. It's as if one is an actual genocide, whilst the other is about a divisive figure with many questions about his authenticity, supposedly having some special powers or status by Allah.
It's perfectly reasonable to suggest all types of religions have been used as some sort of propaganda and indoctrination in the history of the human species, so why do we suddenly decide we should tread carefully and not call out for what they are?
I kind of know what to expect when seeing people comparing cartoons about the Holocaust and Muhammad.
It's as if one is an actual genocide, whilst the other is about a divisive figure with many questions about his authenticity, supposedly having some special powers or status by Allah.It's perfectly reasonable to suggest all types of religions have been used as some sort of propaganda and indoctrination in the history of the human species, so why do we suddenly decide we should tread carefully and not call out for what they are?
(Picking this up from earlier today.)
This is true for the last couple of years, although before that Jews were indeed a prime target of Jihadist terror. I don't think the lack of larger attacks after the mid-2010s means that Islamist antisemitism channeling into practical terror is called off for good, but rather that it's pushed back into a state of latency by several internal and external factors. (Like the defeat of al-Qaeda, the general focus on sectarian wars, improved surveillance and security...)
The fella who was on camera saying one teacher had said something about your boys blowing our boys legs off has gone unchallenged this far.
Could be wrong but there seems to be more to the story than a simple blasphemy discussion.
That's very interesting. I appreciate the clarification. But I'm sure people could twist 9/11 to being acceptable as the US was effectively occupying Islamic states with it's influence. Most nations try to convince people that the war they are entering into is a 'just' war.
But you're ignoring my question (or answering and I'm not realizing)
Maybe in yes or no terms: content that is offensive towards a certain segment of the population is something you would simply not worry about as long as it's educational ?
Well on this topic, I would just add more recent examples. There are obviously the terror attacks on Israel related to Palestine, but you could say that Israel commit state terrorism on Palestine on the other hand. However I remember in the 2015 paris attacks that attackers went off to kill some jews in Paris. In the Danish terror attack, the attacker went off to attack a synagogue but I believe he was shot dead by the security at the synagogue. There is also the fact that nearly all jews fled the middle east after the war on Israel.
That was precisely bin Laden’s argument.
How do you teach kids not to use racist language if you don't tell them what that racist language actually is?
If you are happy with the protests/attacks generated by useless caricatures, then I can understand your post.So are people proposing a ban to "overtly offensive" cartoons and caricatures? I wonder how and who can actually say what is too offensive and what isn't.
I kind of know what to expect when seeing people comparing cartoons about the Holocaust and Muhammad.
It's perfectly reasonable to suggest all types of religions have been used as some sort of propaganda and indoctrination in the history of the human species, so why do we suddenly decide we should tread carefully and not call out for what they are?