HTR(3): Wot's the problem

In March of 2021 the head of Religious Education at Batley Grammar School in Yorkshire used, in class, an image of the prophet Mohammed that had been published by the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, triggering the slaughter of a dozen people.

This provoked protest by the local Muslim community, leading to threats against the teacher concerned and, eventually, that teacher's adoption of a new identity and a relocation to elsewhere in the country. Given what had happened in France to a school teacher in a similar situation this was clearly a prudent course. The school's inquiry, and a subsequent independent enquiry, accepted that the teacher genuinely believed in the educational benefit of sharing the image in their lesson.

When I talk about Islam as something to be resisted, this is what I have in mind. Let me pick out the key characteristics, as we will be returning to them regularly.

The most important element that I would like to emphasise is the taking of offence; in other words, what is exhibited here is a culture in which, not only is offence taken, but that feeling of offence is then pushed outwards into an assertion of political dominance. I call this the 'weaponisation of offence taking', or 'wotting' for short (hence “wot's the problem”). I have much to say about this as I see a right understanding of it as central to understanding the nature of Christianity and the difference between Christianity and Islam. For that reason it is the principal focus of the next chapter (how to understand the cross) but for a foretaste see here. Put briefly, Islam in England is regularly triggered into the taking of offence, and then mobilises into an assertion of power, which causes the retreat of the state from that contested space – and thereby the advance of sharia-compliance.

Now this might seem to be an outsider's perspective, and one that is rooted in bias and Islamophobia. Consider this, though, from Ed Husain's 'The Islamist' (an extremely good book, highly recommended) – I'm going to quote a large extract as it is so important. Husain is describing his time as a student at Tower Hamlets College in the East End of London, when he was part of an Islamic Society that was seeking to advance the cause of Islam, and was doing so successfully, that is, more and more students were becoming more consciously Islamic. Husain writes:

“At prayer times, the small prayer room provided by the college management so generously the previous year no longer sufficed. We needed a larger hall, and demanded it from the college authorities. At first, in meetings with the management, I was told repeatedly that Tower Hamlets College was a secular institution and would not provide religious facilities. But that was a difficult argument to sustain. Moreover, by providing us with a small prayer room in the newly refurbished building, despite there being a community mosque a minute's walk from college, the management had set a precedent. We did not want to pray at the mosque because there we were powerless; at college, we could organize our own speakers and rally the Muslims around us.

“Several meetings with the vice-principal came to nothing. His refusal to provide us with larger prayer facilities emboldened our sense of purpose. The Islamic Society Committee had lengthy meetings about what to do next. For us to back down would be a defeat for the Islamist movement, not something I was prepared to consider. Our response to management inflexibility broke new ground.

“One lunchtime we gathered about seventy students outside the prayer room, gave the loud call to prayer, the adhan, and prayed in the open space in the centre of the campus. Most of the students were ordinary Muslims, not Islamists, but we provided direction and leadership. As president of the Islamic Society I led the prayers. As we prayed I sensed our numbers growing as others started to join us. I ended the prayer and caught a glimpse of the horrified members of the management team looking on, unable to believe what they had witnessed. It was like a scene from Tehran on the grounds of a 'secular' college in London. How were they to put the genie of Islamism back in the bottle?

“Management demanded to see the committee immediately. Again, we missed our classes and held protracted negotiations. I was told not to make threats, but I knew I held the whip hand: with prayers under attack at Tower Hamlets College we could mobilize the wider Muslim community, rally East London Mosque and YMO behind us, and cause major embarrassment to the college. In the event, management backed down, provided us with a larger room, and even agreed to clear the furniture for us before Friday prayers. We had won.”

What Husain describes in his book is, on one level, not that much of a problem. A student society was successful and needed larger premises for their gatherings; after disagreements with the hierarchy they eventually got their way. Life goes on. Yet what is disturbing is that here, in microcosm, is a pattern of behaviour which has been reproduced at larger and larger scales (the subject of the next two articles in this sequence). The Islamic community is organised in such a way as to assert the power of the mass (ie sheer numbers of people). The inciting point is some perceived offence, or slight, or resistance to the Islamic group getting their own way. In response to the assertion of power by the Islamic group the secular authorities retreat. Tower Hamlets College, a supposedly secular institution, provides prayer spaces for the Muslim community – and adjusts the timetable of lectures in order to fit in with Islamic prayer times. In this way, the public space becomes de facto governed by Shari'a law.

Akooji Baadat, an official from Batley’s Snowdon Street Mosque said: ‘Both sides have learnt lessons from this painful incident. The community has forgiven this teacher,…we’ve got nothing against him, and he has nothing to worry about if he was to return to Batley. But when something like this happens there’s always a danger of retaliation. Things have cooled down, we’ve all moved on and the teacher does not need to live in fear, but you can never tell.’

“But you can never tell” - indeed. That's the problem.