Now you’ve offended me.
Prophet Muhammad cartoon sparks Batley Grammar School protest
- Thread starter esmufc07
- Start date
It’s so remarkable. I cannot understand this phenomenon. It’s a blind spot for many people somehow. Although I also think it comes from a good heart because they see Muslims are under constant scrunity which unfortunately is also true.
Made up stories to you. A key aspect of someone else's faith and beliefs.
You're not the greater authority on what people's faith should be here
But atheists don’t tend to impose their thinking on religious people and the other way around it is the case like we see with this teacher.
Nor is there a higher authority in a humanistic form.
It’s a belief, just like many people believe that religion is made up fiction. One does not have supremacy over the other simply because a fairytale is used for ‘evidence.’
I agree to a large extent but it's also something to be careful about. Some younger people are far more impressionable than others. There's a reason age specific censorship exists in the first place. Kids at certain ages don't know any better. Borat is a hilarious movie. Many kids might watch it and think it's funny and then go on and repeat loads of the same anti-Jew jokes because it's funny and not realize that you're actually just insulting many people, because they didn't get the point of the movie in the first place. I'm not an expert on what the ages should be, but it wasn't all that long ago that I was in high school and grade school, and I know even in Canada in the 2000's and 2010's there was lots of subtle racism and xenophobia against other cultures, or looking back at all the anti-gay jokes and phrases people used. Some people quickly grow out of it and realize it's probably wrong. Others don't.
I think the reason why Christians are willing to stand up for blasphemy laws is because quite many evangelical christians would like the same thing. The catholic church would love blasphemy laws as well and the evangelical christians I know in real life as well don't like having their faith questioned. Essentially they also feel entitled to be protected from what they feel is offensive and obviously have their own agenda about protelyzing Christianity to as many as possible.
The ability to offend and take offence (and be in a position to rebut it) is a privilege most people throughout history have not had and absolutely should not be something we want stopped.
Strongly believe that religion in schools is a terrible idea and it's dumb as feck to teach as a subject, and it 100% should be ignored for school. Literally 0 value in it, it doesn't help you in any sort of future career, it doesn't help you become educated, it doesn't help with general health. It's a waste of time. The public school system in Canada does that well, at least when I was going through school.
Whether it's all made up stories, different topic and to each their own. Imo people can believe what they want, doesn't impact me and I'll still go on living my life the same way which is trying to be respectful/tolerant of other people's beliefs/differences.
So we have to respect there beliefs and not draw a cartoon, but they can't respect someone's belief that they can draw it if they want to. Gotcha.
But you wanted the teacher sacked without knowing the full context. That would have impacted his life.
Mind, there have been many posts since then, perhaps you've changed your mind on that.
Brother, we mainly agree here, there’s no need for hyperbole. It’s best to foster debate as soon as possible in one’s educational life. I was fortunate enough to go to a high school where we didn’t have multiple choice questions on many tests, we had to write out our answers & debate our points. I learned a lot in classes where I had to defend terrorism or defend racism or defend classism / capitalism; I realized I didn’t have much to do with all of these as it was difficult to get my heart behind defending them, even for a grade. I am sure stuff was censored from me in my private high school, but not nearly as much as could have been. It’s beneficial for 14-18 y/o students to be challenged & made to feel uncomfortable. There should always be oversight & limits on curriculum, I just don’t feel that line should eliminate debates on topical, poignant issues like this.
I don't think that is correct. You can't really make sense of human history or understand the world in 2021, without knowledge of religion.
There is a difference between evangelising / indoctrinating people and simply educating them about the multiplicity of faiths in the world.
We should want fewer people to be offended by racist or sexist remarks, yes? What good comes out of someone being offensive to a group of peoples entirely peaceful belief? I'm not saying because a group doesn't believe in same sex marriage and are offended by it, that you have to respect that. But when we're talking about something that literally never has to come up apart from when you're intentionally trying to offend them... why? Drawing a cartoon of a religions main prophet in a negative way. What do you gain out of it? It's purpose is to offend. It caused offense. Congrats on being a dickhead.
It’s totally coming from a good place. Plus moderate Muslims (i.e. the vast majority) are being demonised by media campaigns portraying them all as fundamentalists. So it’s good to push back against that.
Where common sense goes out the window (even if the intentions are good) is when progressives start wading in to defend obviously morally indefensible religious bullshit. Like protesting outside a school, demanding that we stop teaching children about relationships and sex. Or insisting on criminal prosecution of a teacher who made a judgement call that showing his class this cartoon might help to better frame the topic being discussed.
It’s a ridiculous, over the top, reaction. And condoning the response just feeds into a climate of Islamophobia. “If we give into their demands on this issue, what’s next?” These are fringe nutters looking to cause trouble. I’m sure the vast majority of moderate Muslims wouldn’t condone what they’re doing so why should anyone else?
I agree you need a certain degree of knowledge of the worlds religions to understand history and the world's societies as they are. You can teach people religion without indoctrinating them.
It's one thing teaching about the impact of religion in history, and another thing being in actual religion classes. 2 very different topics. Where I grew up they have a catholic school board and a normal public school board. The catholic school board forces kids to go to mass (or whatever it is), read about religious history for that religion, and all that other religious stuff, and blend religion into every topic. The public school board will teach history based on historical facts and say what happened with religions. They won't bring religion into any other topic, and there isn't any religion specific class (because it provides 0 actual educational value).
Avoiding idolatry is one part of it. The other part is to avoid misrepresentation. Muslims are not supposed to create any visual representations of any of the past prophets and messengers, and it's because of both idolatry and the huge risk of misrepresenting or incorrectly characterising them.
Whatever text descriptions we have from the Islamic scripturs are enough, and we can't go any further than that. We can't even speculate on details that aren't covered, and that's so that they don't get misconstrued or turned into an idol.
That did make me laugh, but this thread has actually be quite civil in my view. I'm proud of the caf!
These threads always escalate so quickly.
These kind of threads usually are always civil from my experience, yet there are always people acting like these threads descend into extreme evil. Same with the Sarah Everard thread, apparently people were appalled by all the misogyny but I didn't see this immense misogyny at all.
Where was this, where’d you grow up?
Were the catholic schools private or public?
Wow. Just smacks of one school board that exists in facts, another in alternative facts. Just like the two political parties in my country.
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.
So, if you’re in a catholic school zone, you have to go to that school? Or can you opt to go to one outside of that zone due to your religious / non-religious beliefs?
Is all governmental money apportioned then same between catholic & ‘secular’ schools (for the lack of a better term)? What causes catholic schools to be ‘better?’
Is there a typo here or is this your understanding of history?
It absolutely is not a teachers job to be respectful of people's beliefs, if those beliefs go against the entire ethos of the society we live in.
Again, a close family member is a teacher during sex ed, 15 of her students parents refused to let their kids go to class because LGBT sexual health was to be included.
My relative is a gay woman , she absolutely does not have to respect those ridiculous beliefs.
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.
Eye of the beholder – how the Prophet Muhammad has been depicted through the centuries
(Warning - contains medieval images of Muhammad)
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/prophet-muhammad-depictions-art/
(Warning - contains medieval images of Muhammad)
https://www.apollo-magazine.com/prophet-muhammad-depictions-art/
I also spoke to a Muslim neighbor today,I asked him what he thought, he didn't care, but his son finds it incredibly condescending when people get offended on his behalf, over a fecking drawing.
I can't say for certain (as I wasn't born and raised here), and I'll avoid answering the questions to not misinform you. @bosnian_red would be better placed to answer these questions.
Barley grammar school is 4-16 years
The whole school body didn’t attend the class.
If that's the case I probably wouldn't have broached the subject unless they were 14-15 years or above.
From what I understand the problem here is that the teacher went against the ethos of the school, hence the apology from the school.
I'm sure more will become clear as this continues. And I'm going by what I have heard/been told by folk near there and whose kids attend the school (including kids of my cousins) so it may come to lighht that it's different to what I'm told.
The teacher himself had said to the class that the pics he was going to show were highly offensive
I didn't say they did. I'm simply replying to a poster who said the age range was older than a previous poster when it isnt
Gotcha.
I don't know what year the class was, should have asked when speaking to someone earlier.
All I know, and I googled it too, is that the age range is 4-16
Yeah I wrote that elsewhere, of course be respectful of all beliefs within reason. Not drawing an offensive image about a certain religions prophet won't change anyone's life for the worse. Of course other aspects like the LGBT issues that often arise they should for sure ignore and strongly support the people who in this case are being suppressed from living their lives. People should be allowed to do with themselves whatever they want, so long as it does not oppress or actually harm others (for the most part? Hard to cover everything with a blanket statement). In general, don't be a dickhead and let people be happy in a peaceful way is how I see it, and how teachers especially should be respectful towards these things. They don't have to agree with any or a specific religion, but they shouldn't insult it either (but also like you say, shouldn't hide from the archaic views of a certain religion). Drawing or using an offensive picture of the prophet from the religion IMO falls under one of the things you don't do.
Yeah, Canada. It's not that one does alternative facts, the catholic board still teaches everything as far as I know scientifically based, but I'm not sure if they shirk away from some topics like evolution (never asked anyone). But from where I grew up at least, there is both public and private for both standard and catholic school boards, but the vast majority is public. Private schools here have a reputation of being just money sinks for no reason, you don't get a better education here, the public school system is very good as is, and the private system is loaded with boarding students from abroad whose parents didn't realize that the public system was good in Canada and that the private system is a waste of money (at least where I'm from, might not be the case everywhere in Canada). Can't really say one is better than another, there are good catholic and good standard public schools, and there are bad ones for both. I'd say there's a much smaller gap between the best and worst than there is in the States.
Where I grew up there were loads of options, some chose to go to standard public school, some people chose to go to a catholic school (I think to be a teacher there, you have to be baptized even if you aren't religious), not sure what the student requirements were. Funnily enough my fiancée went to a catholic private school (one of the only 2 in the area) as her parents came from Arizona when she was starting high school so they didn't know that the public school system was probably better than the private one. They aren't religious at all either but just picked it based on their experience of what was better in the states, so they both had to pay more and probably got a worse school education out of it. Not sure how it works if within your zone you only have the one option. Generally I don't think there's a difference in education or funding overall between them, no idea the actual numbers and there probably is but the end result wasn't any noticeable difference. Education wise you would assume they miss out on something as they allocate however many hours to religion topics, so I'm not sure what that would've replaced in my schools.