The Batley protestors don’t represent me

The protestors outside Batley Grammar School could be heard shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ — God is great. It’s a term I often use when I need spiritual strength, a basic prayer. But this time, the prayer was being used as a war cry by those who seemed to think that re-affirming their Muslim identity would help them sack a teacher in a school. It amounted to nothing less than the defamation of Islam.

There are perhaps three million Muslims in Britain, the vast majority of us proud to live in one of the most tolerant countries on earth and feeling no conflict between our faith and our nationality. British values are liberal values. Freedom of religion is respected, and freedom of speech too. But so often, the minority who have a problem with these freedoms speak more loudly than the majority. When a small number with recently-invented crackpot views pipe up and purport to speak for all Muslims — as they so often do — they are given platforms.