Kowtowing to nonsense

 

I see that there's an unholy row brewing at a Wakefield school where four pupils have been suspended (as a result of undue pressure from a group of other parents and clerics) for "slightly damaging a Quran" (in fact a small tear in the cover!) The school head said that there was "no ill intent". The worst part about it was the kangaroo court presided over by local mosque leaders where the mother of one of the boys (an autistic kid) apologised and essentially grovelled to the assembled mob, she also donned a headscarf, something with which she was visibly uncomfortable with. The police were also involved and a senior police officer was present during the session, nodding in agreement as a Muslim cleric made a bat-shit crazy speech about their community being willing to "die to protect their sacred book", all in a highly threatening tone. It later transpired that the boy had received death threats and is terrified, these threats are apparently not being investigated by police. 

There are (as always) several ways to look at this somewhat sinister spectacle, you could argue that this poor mother, who probably has her hands more than full with an autistic kid, was simply doing what she felt she had to in order to calm a situation down and get on with her life, I respect that. On the other hand what the blatantly cuckold police were playing at I don't know, firstly we don't have blasphemy laws in this country and although deliberately destroying any book is usually unnecessary and invariably stupid, it's not against any law and doesn't warrant severe punishment! So, why was this boy suspended from school and why aren't the death threats and intimidation being followed up? 

In England if you own a book you can do whatever you wish to it so long as it doesn't involve hurting someone else by slapping them around the head with it, although, there are some heads in this case that could probably do with a good slapping with perhaps something like "The God Delusion" or "The Satanic Verses"! For reference, I would point out the photograph above, it shows police in Saudi  Arabia emptying the street drains after a pilgrimage in Mecca, all those sodden and discarded books are Qurans!

I hope that some heads and or knuckles are wrapped over this, we don't live in a theocracy here, we have freedom of religion and freedom to not believe a single word of any of it, in fact, the majority of people in this pluralistic society have no religion at all. If we can't rely on our police not to kowtow to fundamentalist minorities for fear of violence what happens when the backlash comes, as it inevitably will, not standing up to bullies simply stores up problems for the future; any schoolboy could tell you that!