When a Wakefield boy brought a Koran to school
by Tom Slater, spiked:
A British schoolboy has been suspended and threatened for committing blasphemy. What century is this?
Time was, being a liberal meant spending a lot of your time agitating against religious hardliners, intent on imposing their beliefs on the rest of society. Standing up for people or films or books deemed ‘blasphemous’ was part of the deal. Not any more, it seems, if the silence over the goings on at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield is anything to go by. Last week, four students at the West Yorkshire secondary school were suspended for ‘desecrating’ a holy book. At least one of them, the one who brought the book into school, has been sent death threats. But rather than punishing those doing the threatening, those apparently fuming with religious fury, the school – and the local police – have prioritised dealing with the students, who reportedly dropped and scuffed a copy of the Koran. Welcome to Britain in 2023, where blasphemous teens are menaced while our not-so-liberal elites look the other way.
Here’s what happened, according to a local imam, a Wakefield councillor, the school’s headteacher and a policeman. All of whom addressed a meeting at the local mosque on Friday night, and all of whom should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Last Wednesday, a student (who happens to be autistic) reportedly brought a copy of the Koran into school on a dare – his forfeit for losing a game of Call of Duty with his mates. On the school tennis court, they read aloud from it then walked back inside the school, where another kid knocked it out of their hands and on to the floor. For this, the four students were suspended, following a quick investigation. The police – naturally – were then called in. At the meeting on Friday, a policeman, introduced as chief inspector Andy Thornton, confirmed that the students’ treatment of the book has been recorded as a ‘hate incident’. This is despite the fact that the school has ruled that the students had ‘no malicious intent’. ‘[I]f more consequences have to be followed, that will be the case’, Tudor Griffiths, the school’s headteacher, told those gathered at the mosque – keen to reassure them that he took the issue seriously.
Unbelievably, it gets worse.
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