This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every Friday as soon as it is released.
In March 2021, the quiet town of Batley was thrust into the spotlight when a religious studies teacher at Batley Grammar School faced serious threats for showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a class. What followed was a harrowing ordeal that exposed deep-seated issues within our society.
The Khan review, led by government adviser Dame Sara Khan, uncovered the shocking reality faced by the teacher at the centre of the Batley incident. Despite being the victim of harassment, he was let down by the council, police, and the school trust. The review highlighted a critical oversight in previous investigations and local leaders’ statements: the failure to acknowledge the personal impact on the teacher. Instead, the focus remained on the perceived ‘offense’ caused by the cartoons, highlighting a troubling trend of prioritising the wishes and concerns of parts of the community over democratic values and rights.
The Batley incident serves as a stark reminder of the dangers of prioritsing cultural sensitivity over fundamental freedoms. Embracing Multiculturalism should never have led to a reluctance to confront controversial issues for fear of causing offence. Institutions, fearful of causing offence should not cave to the demands of vocal groups, undermining democratic principles in the process.
The Batley affair, with the teacher in question still in hiding, shows the inherent risks of law enforcers and institutions like schools behaving as if we still had blasphemy laws in England and Wales. We don’t. Nor are they to be found in Scotland since earlier this year. Yet, there appears to be a lack of understanding and training among law enforcers on religious extremism, leaving them ill-equipped to address such complex issues. This reluctance to confront excessive religious zeal and extremism only serves to embolden extremists and perpetuate a cycle of suspicion, fear and censorship. We cannot continue to face up to uncomfortable truths for fear of stepping on cultural sensitivities.
It’s high time we acknowledged the risks and threats to the country posed by mass immigration. In this regard, we have referred many times to the UK’s population increase of eight million people in the twenty years between the 2001 and 2021 censuses, seven million of which was due to immigration. One element of this increase that we have referred to less frequently is that the Muslim population more than doubled in that period, going from 1.6 million to 3.9 million people. In other words, nearly 30% of the eight million population increase were Muslims. This is a significant part of the mass immigration that has resulted in the population explosion we are experiencing. As we have often said, the huge numbers have serious implications for our housing, services and future wellbeing. However, it behoves us not to lose sight of what the rapid change in the mix and nature of our society also means for its future cohesion and stability.
This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every Friday as soon as it is released.