Sometimes an image can speak a thousand words. I remember being profoundly moved upon seeing a photograph (one that went on to win the Pulitzer prize) taken in 1993 in famine-blighted Sudan.
It featured a young child crouching, starving and naked, on the dry ground while, a few yards away, a vulture looked on, sensing some easy pickings.
I still think about that photo today. Prose is not required to give force to images of this kind. They tell their own story.
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Similarly, I felt a deep fury when viewing an image of the scene inside a mosque in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in 2023, following reports that a local boy had ‘scuffed’ a copy of the Koran in the school playground. A ‘hate incident’ had been recorded by West Yorkshire Police, who promptly dispatched a senior officer to the community in a bid to dampen the ire of angry Muslims.
The officer, along with the boy’s mother (who was doubtless petrified after her son received death threats) and the school’s headmaster, attended a meeting at the mosque.
Reports detailed how the trio, all desperate to avoid repercussions, prostrated themselves before their audience (which was comprised entirely of men, of course).
But it was perfectly possible to deduce the nature of the meeting from the image. The officer, mother and headmaster, all plainly under the most intense pressure, were there to make amends.
The correct response from the police on that occasion would have been to make it very clear that Britain does not have a blasphemy law, and anyone inclined to do harm to the boy or his family would be arrested and prosecuted. No ifs, no buts. That should have been the extent of their involvement.
Instead, they capitulated to the religious bullies.
Bring the Batley Grammar teacher out of hiding and I'll embrace a definition of Islamophobia - Paul Embery | Getty Images
It wasn’t the first time that particular constabulary had caved to the mob. Two years previously, a teacher at Batley Grammar School had innocently displayed an image of the prophet Muhammad and was subsequently subjected to threats of violence from religious fundamentalists and forced into hiding.
A review led by the independent adviser to the government for social cohesion and resilience, Dame Sara Khan, later found that the teacher had been ‘let down’ by West Yorkshire Police and – quite remarkably – was not even considered to have been a victim of crime.
“There was a disproportionate concern for not causing offence to the religious sensibilities of those who, unaware of the facts, chose to engage in intimidation and harassment,” the review concluded.
That the teacher remains in hiding to this day, his career almost certainly over, and that nobody was ever brought before a court for the harassment he experienced, is an appalling indictment of our political class and criminal justice system and their pusillanimity in the face of ideological extremism.
So when the elites tell us that the model of multiculturalism they have foisted upon us is working, I refuse to accept it. And my refusal is motivated in large part by the experience of that teacher in Batley.
When he is back where he belongs – in the classroom, standing in front of his students and carrying out his job free from the fear of being attacked or murdered – I may change my mind. But until that day comes, I am not for turning.
Don’t misunderstand me: I defend freedom of religion, and I believe that Muslims should, as much as any other group, be at liberty to worship the God of their choice.
But that liberty should not extend to having their particular belief system ringfenced from criticism or scrutiny, or the everyday social norms – such as displaying an image to a classroom of students – that apply to every other ideology.
And it certainly doesn’t permit them to threaten and harass anyone whom they deem to have ‘offended’ against their faith.
It is beyond time, frankly, that we stopped giving way to the hardliners. Indulging them has merely served to embolden them.
When they see that authority capitulates in the face of their threats, they become more confident about doing it the next time. And before we know it, we find ourselves at a point where a man is hauled through the courts and convicted, as Hamit Coskun was in June, for “desecrating” a holy book (one that happened to be his own personal property) in public.
We need an honest conversation about the effects of radical Islam in our society and the manner in which it has made much of the country – including large sections of our ruling class – less confident about asserting some of our own ancient freedoms and liberties.
That honest conversation won’t come through constant pandering or attempts to chill debate – as the government’s attempts to establish a new definition of ‘islamophobia’ are likely to do.
A man in Batley who was dedicated to his vocation of developing the knowledge of children saw his career and life upturned because of that weak-kneed approach. We must make sure there are no more such victims.