“Hate” and the Islamic Onslaught on British Values: Part One

Batley and Wakefield

Two hammer blows were delivered to British values in Batley in 2021 and Wakefield in 2023. Until then, religious education in schools had been regulated, somewhat loosely, by the non-ministerial government department Ofsted. If we listen only to politicians and the mainstream media, we may be forgiven for believing that nothing has changed. The 2024 Ofsted Subject Report on Religious Studies has appeared in the usual way. There is a determined effort to pretend that the incidents in these schools are over and have no implications for the future. But in the absence of vigorous counter-measures, these subversions present a threat to the roots of our pluralist, tolerant Western society which will inevitably prove fatal. It is alarming that not only is Britain’s Labour Government failing to act against this threat; it is also actively cooperating with the Islamic lobby in fear of losing Muslim votes.

The offence of the Head of Religious Studies at Batley school was to teach very much in the spirit of Ofsted’s thoughtful, enlightened, “multicultural” notion of Religious Education as laid out in its Research Review in May 2021. Pupils were expected “to grasp a bigger picture about the place of religion and non-religion in the world” and lessons were to be “grounded in what is known about religion or non-religion from academic study”. In accordance with this aim, the teacher showed pupils the famous cartoons from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, of September 2005, including one by Kurt Westergaard depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a lighted fuse.

What more relevant image could there be to symbolize the place of Islam in the modern world, bearing in mind the mayhem which some Muslims unleashed following the publication of the cartoons? Months before this lesson, a teacher in Paris, Samuel Paty, had been beheaded by a Chechen migrant, after being accused by a student, who had not even attended the relevant civics class, of showing caricatures of the Prophet with “Islamophobic” intent.

In Batley, the light of reason which shines through the words of the Ofsted Report was instantaneously extinguished by the threat of violence. More shockingly, perhaps, the threats were not made in response to the image’s attack on Islam. In the tradition of Swiftian satire, the cartoon elides the founder of Islam with the atrocities for which his religion is responsible. But this moral reproach was not the cause of “offence”, to understand which we must forget satire and irony and take a step back into primitive darkness. The cause of anger was simply the fact that the Prophet had been depicted at all. We are told that figurative representations of Mohammed, positive or negative, are forbidden under Islam. Indeed, apparently rational adult Muslims feel so hurt by such representations that threats of murder are only to be expected. Historically informed observers who pointed out that, although iconoclasm is firmly established in Islam, there have been periods when depictions of the Prophet reached the status of high art were ignored.

The lesson in Batley had been approved by the school leadership team and the same teaching materials had been used by at least two other teachers over the previous two years without any problem. But in 2021, a group of external activists, the Muslim Action Forum (MAF), decided to make this lesson a pretext to stir up outrage. Their ultimate motivation lies in Quran 9:29 which tells believers to “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor… acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (translation by Yusuf Ali). Their intention was to make the infidels in the school feel that they had been “subdued”. A full account of events was published in “Blasphemy Extremism” by Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens in March last year.

MAF helped organise the Batley school protests and, as we learn from the subversive pressure group 5 Pillars, 130 imams wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanding that he condemn the teacher.

An intimidatory mob collected at the school gates. Prominent in the protests was local Imam Mohammed Amin Pandor, brother of the leader of Labour-run Kirklees Council and a central figure in the choice of Kim Leadbeater as the Batley and Spen by-election Labour candidate to replace Tracy Brabin later in 2021.

The responses of the headteacher, the media, and local and national politicians in Britain were shameful. It was the duty of the school’s headteacher, John Hughes, to uphold the rule of law and to suppress the unruly hysteria focused on this teacher. He should have condemned the siege of the school, requested that the police take action against those stirring up hatred, and insisted on the immediate return of the teacher with whatever physical protection was needed to ensure his safety. No less (and no more) was required to preserve the multicultural fabric of the school.

Instead the headteacher suspended the teacher and “unequivocally” apologized for his use of “a totally inappropriate resource”. Ironically the increasingly violent events at the school proved how appropriate this image was to the lesson. But Islam is deaf to ironies. The headteacher promised to review the curriculum with “all the communities represented in our school”, though only one “community” was concerned. Both the local council and the MP, Tracy Brabin, welcomed the apology and the police offered little support to the teacher, even when death threats began to be made.

Following the MAF’s disgraceful publication of the teacher’s name and the death threats, the police eventually restored order by giving him a new identity and sending him into hiding away from Batley. His career in ruins, he now has post-traumatic stress disorder and suffers from suicidal feelings. As far as one can see, nothing is being done to right this injustice nor to remedy his plight. The Islam of 5 Pillars, MAF, and Imam Pandor have been allowed to victimize him without resistance. Every individual who should have supported the teacher, whether in the school, the police, the media, or politics, was terrorized by the thought that they might be killed. The civilized relativism of Ofsted was pathetically defenseless against this threat of terror. No one wants to have their throat cut.

Far too late, the government decided to act, shutting the door long after the horse had bolted. British values, it decided, should have been upheld against medieval terror. In typical British fashion, it commissioned a thorough report by Dame Sara Khan. Published in November 2024, this concluded with blistering moral clarity that the teacher had been “utterly failed” by all involved: “by Batley Multi Academy Trust, Kirklees Council and West Yorkshire Police”. At the time the newly-elected Labour MP Kim Leadbeater kept a low profile, though she supported the conclusions of the belated Khan Review.

And what has happened in response? Absolutely nothing. With despicable effrontery, Batley School “hit back” at Dame Sara on GB News. No attempt has been made to resolve the issue by denying victory to Islam and allowing the teacher to return. The United Kingdom might as well be ruled by a true-believing caliph. Politicians seem content or even relieved that the teacher and his family members remain, for the time being, out of sight and out of mind. At least they are still alive, unlike Samuel Paty. No one, least of all Britain’s current leaders, Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper, and Shabana Mahmood, acknowledges the momentous implications of the Batley events.

Islam was empowered by this outcome and will not hold back. It is important here to make a distinction between the ideology – Islam – and individual British Muslims. History has given the Prophet Mohammed a far-reaching influence. But the contradictions of the human mind are such that many of those who are culturally Muslim, many even who believe fervently that they love their Prophet and live by the Quran, in fact live by values far superior to those of Mohammed. Many decent Muslims, for instance, are disgusted by the atrocities of Al Qaeda and ISIS and twist the words of the Quran to prove that their members are not Muslims. In fact, of course, all members of those organizations cite the Quran, with reason, to justify their atrocities.

By the same token, there are many within British Islam who wish to integrate constructively into British society. The Muslim “community”, however, as represented by Masjids will never assimilate. Their actions will always be dictated by the final word of Allah in the Quran, an early medieval totalitarian document. This means that there will inevitably be other Batleys. And if the responses of those in authority in this case are to be repeated, “British values” have already been trashed. No teacher in any school will now dare to teach religion and blasphemy with detachment and objectivity, though, as Ofsted’s Reports on Religious Education tell us, these topics are essential to any understanding of the world in which we now live. Schools are henceforward under the control of the self-appointed Muslim “community”, backed by cynical politicians concerned to woo the Muslim vote.

The second blow to British values was delivered two years later in 2023 in Kettlethorpe High School, Wakefield. Here the immediate targets of Islamic outrage were four fourteen-year-old boys. A Year 10 pupil had lost a Call of Duty videogame and as a dare had to take a copy of the Quran he had bought with his own money into school. Having bought it, it is highly likely that this boy and his friends will have read it, or parts of it, eager to understand the contents of this key book in the culture of their fellow pupils. Clearly its contents did not impress them and at some point the book was dropped in the school grounds. The behaviour of these boys was what we might expect of any intellectually alert, morally aware fourteen-year old. Such questioning is precisely what school is for. It is the lifeblood of education.

Malignant actors intervened, intent on imposing submission, and this trivial episode rapidly escalated. Akef Akbar, a qualified solicitor and independent Wakefield councilor, filled the vacuum which should have been occupied by the school authorities, the police, and politicians, and offered his good offices as a “mediator”. A farcical and entirely irrelevant dispute ensued as to exactly how much damage had been done to this boy’s book. The headteacher, then Tudor Griffiths, maintained that it “had remained intact and there was ‘no malicious intent’”. Akbar claimed that “it sustained a slight tear to the cover and smears of dirt on some of the pages”. Throwing paraffin onto the flames, he also asserted that “it had been kicked around on the school premises”, a claim denied by the school. Akbar examined the book at a meeting of “concerned community leaders” and took his own photographs as evidence. It will seem astonishing to some that in the midst of this unhinged farce, no one asked what possible business it was of these people whether or not a book was kicked around in a school playground.

Once again, those who should have stood firm hastened to give way. The headteacher immediately surrendered his school’s intellectual and educational integrity. Taking a similar line to that of John Hughes in Batley, he suspended the boys and assured those who had created this hysterical mayhem that “we will be working… to ensure they understand why their actions were unacceptable… We have made it very clear that their actions did not treat the Quran with the respect it should have.” What respect did Griffiths believe it “should” have?

He explained that he had taken steps “to reinforce the values and behaviour we expect from every member of this school community to ensure that all religions are respected”. His imposition of “respect for all religions” was fundamentally wrong. Every pupil has a right to freedom of conscience. What the school should enforce is not, as Griffiths said, respect for all religions. Ideologies, whether religious or not, must earn respect. Respect is required only for fellow human beings, who may follow different religions, or no religion. In the United Kingdom, everyone, even fourteen-year-old boys, has the right to question, deride, or satirize any ideology, including Islam. Such rational skepticism is distinct from personal hatred of “Muslims” or “Muslimness” (real or “perceived”) which was identified in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims Report concerning “Islamophobia” as showing “hate”.

It might have been hoped that an Ofsted-regulated school would take an impartial stance on this issue. In its 2022 inspection, Kettlethorpe High School had been rated overall as “good”. But nowhere does Ofsted, nor any British law, lay down that the Quran, a text created by a warlord who committed atrocities and owned sex slaves captured in battle, must be accorded respect.

A letter including barely veiled threats was circulated by the Jamia Masjid Swafia:

Sinister images of the imam flanked by thickset believers and Akef Akbar were issued:

Akbar convened a kangaroo court in this mosque, to which West Yorkshire Police, in complete contravention of its duty, sent a uniformed officer to sit uncomfortably beside “community leaders”, while Akbar at the far end of the table sympathetically “mediated” by humiliating the mother of one of the boys who wore a makeshift hijab for the occasion. In understandable terror at the danger to her son and faced by an all-male audience, she apologized for his sin and expressed deep respect for the Quran.

As if it were relevant, it was widely publicized that her son was autistic, no doubt in the hope that this would deflect the malice of those who wished him harm. While this solemn charade was being mounted, the other boys and their parents, no doubt greatly relieved, kept their heads down.

Subsequently, the imam who chaired this meeting, Hafiz Muhammad Mateen Anwar, was found to have delivered sermons in which he referred to Shia Muslims by the derogatory word “rafidhis”, told believers that homosexuality is “barbaric”, and made threats against Muslims who celebrate Christmas. He had also urged Muslims not to listen to music, which is “toxic” and “messes with your mind”. What did Ofsted feel about the elevation of this man to a decisive role in school policy?

Since no support was forthcoming from the headteacher or from local politicians, it fell to the police to make things up as they went along. West Yorkshire Police rushed to defuse the situation by announcing in the media that they had summarily convicted the boys of “non-crime hate”. This is a bewildering phrase with a complicated origin. The phrase “hate crime” is first recorded in the 1960s in the USA, where it was applied to crimes motivated by racial prejudice. A religious hate crime is, in the words of the Crown Prosecution Service, a “criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s…religion or perceived religion”.

But a “non-crime hate incident”, which finds its UK origin in the 1999 McPherson Report into the Stephen Lawrence murder, is altogether more problematic. Though Labour politicians are addicted to speaking of religion and race as though in the case of Islam they are interchangeable, they are not – as Sir Salman Rushdie or any other ex-Muslim with brown skin will testify. It might be argued that such fine distinctions do not matter. After all, we are concerned with “non-crime”. But non-crime hate does matter if this “hate” is entered on a boy’s record and could damage his future prospects with employers. In the event these concerns soon became irrelevant. Following an intervention by the National Secular Society, it was determined in May 2023 that the category “non-crime hate” should not be recorded in the case of incidents which occur in schools.

To complicate matters, a fellow pupil at the school, “also a child” according to the BBC report, was identified by the police as having made death threats against at least one of the boys. This child was “given words of advice by an officer”. In its initial evasive answer to a Freedom of Information request made in November 2024, West Yorkshire Police seemed uneasily aware that they had treated the “non-crime” of making a death threat less seriously than the “non-crime” of scuffing a book. Their reply declined to respond to the FOI on the grounds that it would not be legally permissible for them to reveal whether the child who made the threat also had had a non-crime hate incident recorded against him or her.

Whilst news articles state that no incident had been recorded for the individual making death threats, for West Yorkshire Police to confirm or deny would breach the Data Protection Act 2018 as it would show what is/is not recorded against a living individual.

(Email from a West Yorkshire Police Disclosure Officer in response to a Freedom of Information request, November 2024)

This reply makes no sense. Are the four non-Muslim boys not “living individuals”? Or is there some reason why the Data Protection Act 2018 does not apply to them? Moreover, though the child who threatened the boys with death was clearly motivated by the familiar hate directed at infidels throughout Mohammed’s Quran, it is very difficult to see any “hate” in the reported actions of the non-Muslim boys. One may even guess at an element of high-spirited humour in their actions. Fortunately this speculation about the differential treatment of “non-crimes” was revealed to be out of date when in December 2024 West Yorkshire Police sent a direct response to the FOI indicating that “there is no information registered against the children involved”.

The police, who are not expected to know anything much about theology and, except for the Muslims among them, have almost certainly never read the Quran, were put in the position of having to adjudicate between individual freedom of conscience on the one hand and collective devotion to a medieval prophecy on the other. They should have supported freedom of conscience, but it is understandable that they did not. Amid the threats and mayhem, they took a line which “kept the peace” and restored “social cohesion”. They were aware of the debacle in Batley where the police were similarly left in the lurch. And they will also have had in mind the precedent of Samuel Paty. West Yorkshire Police succeeded in averting violence. But only, as in Batley, by abjectly submitting to Islam.

Policing in the UK is meant to be “without fear or favour”. Police Forces still uphold this position. But in this case, extremists with a seventh-century ideology were favored because of the justified fear that they might become violent. It is alien to every instinct of fair play and every principle of British law that any citizen should be saddled with a police record without due process and without any crime having been committed. Nevertheless, Britain’s current Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is on record as wishing to see an increase in the use of the “non-crime hate” category (though not now in schools).

Instead Cooper should be moving rapidly to root out all “non-crime” from the legal system. A recent report authored by David Spencer, a former detective chief inspector in the Metropolitan Police, and Policy Exchange’s Head of Crime and Justice, concluded that: “The NCHI regime is having a devastating impact on the public and their perception of policing.”

In Wakefield in 2023, the “Muslim community” succeeded spectacularly in imposing Quranic notions of blasphemy on a school and thus, by extension, on the country’s entire education system. Ofsted still exists, but the British people have now been put on notice that in future, any imam imported last week from Pakistan, ill-educated, and contemptuous of British values, may at the drop of a Quran overrule all Ofsted’s stipulations on balance and detachment.

With the increase in immigration from parts of the world where infants are told they will go to hell or deserve to be killed by their families if they leave Islam, it can only get worse. What hope is there for Ofsted’s Reports on Religious Education in a United Kingdom which hosts an ever-growing number of recent arrivals, many of them adults well above school age, who take their moral and religious convictions from the Islamic countries from which they immigrated?

The implications of events in these schools, so catastrophically mismanaged by all involved, are ominous and far-reaching. In the second and third parts of this essay, I shall move on to the wider context of Islam’s ongoing war against “Christendom”, now “the West”. This, as we see in Batley and Wakefield, is still vividly active in the minds of many British Muslims as unfinished business. But it seems to have been almost totally forgotten by non-Muslims. Preoccupied with our guilt over Western imperialism and “reparations” for the Atlantic Slave Trade, we are unaware that recent immigration from Islamic countries has, once again, given realistic imaginative life to the core Islamic aim of conquest.

The former Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople is already Islamic, as are some Eastern European states (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Azerbaijan). Khamenei and Erdoğan are currently promising the destruction of the Jews and the conquest of Jerusalem. It is easy to see that for anyone steeped in the Quran, whether in the United Kingdom or anywhere else in the world, the reabsorption of Al-Andalus and the Iberian peninsula into the Ummah will appear inevitable. And then, absurd as it may seem to us in the West, Rome, Paris, London, and New York must follow. No matter how long it takes, the entire world must submit, as Mohammed prophesied, to the One True Religion of Islam.

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This article was first published on Ayaan’s new platform Courage.Media.

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