Enforcing a De-Facto Blasphemy Code in Britain
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
2 March
2023
An Alleged
Quran Desecration Becomes another Excuse for Muslim Exceptionalism
Main
Points:
1. An alleged
incident of desecration of the Quran was reported from a West Yorkshire school.
2. The student
at the centre of the controversy was autistic yet local Muslims forced the
mother of this teenager to tender an apology.
3. Similar
incidents have happened elsewhere and in all such cases, the Muslim response
has been to claim special protection when it comes to their religion.
4. The state
has been more than willing to accommodate the voices of the Islamists to the
detriment of progressive and liberal voices within the Muslim community.
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Muslims protest outside Regent's Park Mosque against newspaper cartoons
depicting the prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper.
Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty Images
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An alleged
desecration of the Quran took place in a school in West Yorkshire last week.
According to reports, one student, after losing an online game, was asked by
his fellow students to bring a copy of the Quran into the school. It is alleged
by Muslims that within the school premises, the holy book was torn as it was
kicked around by these students. The school authorities put out a statement
clarifying that “the holy book remains intact and that our initial inquiries
indicate that there was no malicious intent by those involved”. However, as
others have pointed out, it does appear that some of the pages of the holy book
were scuffed and that some damage was done to the cover. Subsequently, the
school suspended four students who were involved in the incident.
Ideally,
the matter should have ended there. But the Muslim reaction did not. Despite
the fact that the main accused in the incident, the boy who brought the Quran
into the school, is autistic. It should have been common sense to forgive this
child given his challenges but the local Muslim community thought of this as a
good opportunity to remind this district of the power of Islam. They escalated
the matter to the police and the local authorities despite the school inquiring
into the issue. They also held a meeting, in which the mother of the accused
child was present, where she pleaded for forgiveness. The incident has not just
polarized the local community but is now the subject of major debate in the
whole of the UK. Anti-Muslim bigots are having a field day ‘proving’ that the
religion and its adherents are not compatible with a democracy like Britain.
What could have been handled at a local level by Muslims was allowed to get out
of hand. Probably the Muslims themselves wanted it like this in order to
showcase their power to enforce blasphemy codes on the rest of the society.
This is not
even an issue of free speech. Those who are not Muslims are expressing a
genuine incomprehension at the inability of the Muslim community to forgive an
autistic teenager and the necessity of shaming a mother for no fault of hers.
After all, don’t the Muslims claim that Islam is a religion of peace and that
forgiveness is one of the highest virtues taught by their religion? So why this
attempt to scar the life of a teenager? Or is this another attempt to enforce
the religious code of blasphemy across that country? I say this because the
Muslim protest almost seems like a pattern. There was the Batley grammar school
incident in 2021 in which some teachers were suspended for showing a picture of
the Prophet in a discussion about blasphemy. There was a similar outrage from
Sunni Muslims, in 2022, who eventually forced the cancellation of The Lady of
Heaven, a movie about Prophet’s daughter which showed some of his companions in
uncharitable light. Muslims even took offense when Majid Nawaz tweeted a
picture of Jesus and Muhammad together to make a point that visual depiction of
the prophet was not always forbidden in Muslim history.
The way
Muslims have reacted in all such issues has amounted to enforcing a de facto
blasphemy code. Even PREVENT, the counter terrorism wing of UK, which is often
accused of being soft on Islamists, has concede that “violence associated with
accusations of blasphemy and apostasy is an area of particular importance” in
tackling extremism.
What is
more depressing though is how the local governments, in all such cases,
capitulates to the demands of those Muslims who want to make political capital
out of such incidents. The inquiry committee in the Batley grammar school, for
instance, categorically stated that, “the actions of the teachers were highly
inappropriate”. It further stated that “it was not necessary for staff to use
the material in question [pictures] to deliver the learning outcome on the
subject of blasphemy”. What the statement basically means is that teachers are
no longer free to decide what and how to teach simply because there are Muslim
students in the class. What this also means is that in case of any subject
related to Islam, teachers would be well advised to self-censor themselves so
that they do not end up hurting the religious sensibilities of Muslims. What a
loss for the average Muslim student in such classes, as he or she will be
deprived of engaging the issue from another perspective altogether.
Such
responses also assume that the Muslim community is homogenous. This is far from
truth. Like in all societies, there are divergent voices on such issues within
the Muslim society too. Not all Muslims were asking that the child in West
Yorkshire be punished or that his mother tender an apology. Therefore, the
response of the local authorities only give succour to the Islamists by making
them the representative of all Muslims. By extension, it can be argued that the
state authorities are keen to concede the intimidating demands of Islamists to
the detriment of progressive and liberal voices within the community. What it
amounts to is an infantilizing of Muslims by assuming that they are simply
incapable of upholding liberal principles.
The more
important question though remains the Muslim positioning on the issue of
perceived blasphemy. It is not that Muslims as a group should not be asserting
their religious rights; certainly, they should. But those rights should be
those which does not impinge on the rights of others. Through centuries of
struggle against religious absolutism, the British have established a system
where critical thinking about religion is encouraged and thought of as a
cornerstone of that society. Christianity has made peace with this secular
march of the western society. But Muslim narcissism about enforcing the
dictates of their religion has reached a point where it is threatening to upset
the very core foundations of societies to which they have migrated and in which
they wish to integrate. But integration has always been a two-way street. The
reluctance of the Muslims to adopt anything of their host society can only mean
that they still have miles to go in terms of appreciating multiculturalism and
pluralism.
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A regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad
Alam is a writer and researcher on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.
URL: https://newageislam.com/muslims-islamophobia/enforcing-de-facto-blasphemy-britain/d/129227
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