No one has the right NOT to be OFFENDED by Cartoons at Batley Grammar School!

The attack by Muslims against our 'Freedom of Speech' has once again raised its head, and this time in West Yorkshire, England, at the Batley Grammar School. On Monday, March 22, a teacher at the school trying to explain to his students the need for freedom of Speech introduced the French Charlie Hebdo magazine covers which mocked the prophet Muhammad, published between 2006 and 2014. The school has mostly Muslim students who went home and told their parents. Today, March the 25th, those parents, along with their Mufti Mohammed Amin Pandor, marched on the school and demanded that the teacher be sacked. The Head Teacher, Gary Kibble, quickly acquiesced and suspended the teacher, and then wrote a letter of apology to the Muslims which stated that the school would never allow those cartoons to be shown again, and that they would remove the content of his lesson from the curriculum, with the promise that the school would "undertake a formal review of the RS curriculum to ensure no other resource of statement is inappropriate" to Muslims. This has not gone down well with certain groups within Britain. Stephen Evans, the chief executive of the National Secular Society has called the demonstration an "attempt to impose an Islamic blasphemy taboo on a school" He went on to say that "teachers must have a reasonable degree of freedom to explore sensitive subjects and enable students to think critically about them. And the school's weak res[ponse will fuel a climate of censorship, which is brought on by attempts to force society as a whole to accommodate unreasonable and reactionary religious views". Dr Paul Stott, an associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society think tank told reporters, "Secondary schools have a duty to introduce pupils to contentious ideas and debates, as part of a process of teaching children how, rather than what, to think. Schools in the UK must not concede policy to angry mobs at the school gates or to so-called community leaders. The school's censorious approach appears to be the exact opposite of the approach in France, where demands to sanitise classroom discussions by Islamist campaigners were resolutely rejected by the government, following the hideous murder of teacher Samuel Paty" [in October last year by a Muslim who beheaded him outside his school] Toby Young, the director General of the Free Speech Union stood in solidarity with the teacher at Batley Grammar who has been suspended at the behest of a censorious religious mob. He is writing the local chief Constable asking him to make sure the teacher is "protected from intimidation". He went on to tell reporters, "Schools should be teaching children about the importance of free speech and for the headteacher to give in immediately to the demands of an outrage mob - apologising to them and suspending the teacher concerned, sets a very bad example. No one has the right NOT to be offended" The full story of the Batley Grammar School can be read here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9401527/Furious-parents-protest-Prophet-Muhammad-cartoon-shown-class.html?ito=whatsapp_share_article-top Another account of the Batley Grammar School Story can be read here: https://news.sky.com/story/amp/parents-protest-outside-batley-grammar-school-after-image-of-prophet-mohammed-is-shown-in-class-12256247 © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020 (46,370) Music: Adding the Sun, by Kevin Macleod - from filmmusic-io