The Batley Grammar School teacher should not be sacked for blasphemy

It is more than 6 years since the Charlie Hebdo murders. 12 people were shot dead in the magazine office, murdered by Islamists to avenge its publication of cartoons of Mohammed. Their “crime” was that they had committed blasphemy. Over the next three days a policewoman and 4 customers at a Jewish shop were also murdered.

In the immediate aftermath of the atrocity it became fashionable so say “Je Suis Charlie” in solidarity with the magazine. At least a million people, including the French President marched through Paris to demonstrate their support for freedom of speech. The British Prime Minister joined them, as did many other world leaders.

Even the Saudi Arabian ambassador attended the demonstration, which might have seemed a little surprising given the Kingdom’s well-known disapproval of blasphemy. However, Saudi Arabia does not endorse the extra-judicial killing of blasphemers. Instead – as with Raif Badawi – it punishes them with lashes and imprisonment, only very rarely with beheading, and then only after a trial.

In October last year Samuel Paty, a teacher was beheaded, again in France, after apparently showing his students some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Mohammed. He had reportedly asked anyone who did not wish to see the pictures to close their eyes first. The precaution did not save him from a planned and premeditated attack by a religiously motivated mob. Continue reading “The Batley Grammar School teacher should not be sacked for blasphemy”

Abi Wilkinson should be ashamed of her abuse of Danny Finkelstein

Danny Finkelstein – or Baron Finkelstein of Pinner to give him the title he hardly ever uses – has become the latest person to be the object of a twitter hate campaign.

He is, according to Abi Wilkinson, a Corbyn-supporting journalist, “a racist scumbag” who is “chill with ethnic cleansing.”

It may seem surprising that Finkelstein, former member of the SDP and since that party’s demise a leading voice of “moderate” Conservatism, should be so characterised, even by Wilkinson who believes that “incivility isn’t merely justifiable, but actively necessary.”

His columns in The Times are typically reflective, considered and measured. This has not prevented him sometimes receiving the most appalling online abuse, accusing him of defending paedophilia, for example, because he expressed scepticism about groundless allegations levelled at politicians. Continue reading “Abi Wilkinson should be ashamed of her abuse of Danny Finkelstein”