Whoever was depicted by the cartoon shown briefly to students at Batley Grammar School last week, as part of a PowerPoint presentation that had been in use for ages, it was certainly not the Prophet Muhammad.
At the time of writing, no-one has seen his face for 1389 years. He died in 632CE. There were no cameras in those days and it is painfully well known that Muslims do not make or keep images of their beloved prophet. At the time of his death, no-one but a Muslim would have been terribly interested. It is safe to conclude that no authentic image of him survives.
Amid the furore, non-Muslim apologists are quick to bid for the politically correct limelight. The Independent grants irritatingly provocative exposure to the well-intentioned but sadly misguided Carolyn Edwards, from Leeds. Ms Edwards’ missive is fairly well written; a class of eleven-year-olds would find reassuringly few errors if they were to peer-assess her outpouring. She slips on a classic, common banana skin - that of assuming, from her liberally postmodern Olympian vantage point, that she can see everyone’s point of view, while the rest of us can see only our own.
“Are we indifferent to an action that knowingly offends the nearly 2 billion Muslims with which we share the planet?” she rhetorically asks. I really hope the bruises aren’t too bad as, feet flying amid fruit peel in the air, she crashes down in an inelegant heap. ‘We’, it is evident, are different and separate from the 2 billion Muslims. We share a planet with them. They are a different species. They get offended by stuff, and we have the power to offend or not to offend. This is patronising condescension at its nauseating worst. Blind to her own arrogance, she gazes down her nose at the simple, bewildered underlings over whom we hold potentially offensive sway.
A vanishingly small sample of the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims - a few of them actually parents of children at the school - has rocked up at the gates of Batley Grammar, COVID-19 protocols be damned, mask around the chin, to exercise their Islamic right to be offended, insulted and very, very angry. And the accommodationist left falls over itself to appease them.
Consider this. How much more respectable would be the face of Islam in the UK if the below, or something like it, was the text of their statement to the press.
“It has been reported that a cartoon, said to portray the noble Prophet Muhammad, has been shown to students in a religious studies class, as part of a PowerPoint that is used year on year. Whoever is depicted in the cartoon, it is certainly not our Prophet, for no-one knows what his face looked like. He has been dead for almost fourteen centuries. There is no recorded likeness of him anywhere. If, as some correspondents suggest, the cartoon’s display was a calculated attempt to provoke us, it has failed to do so. Islam is a peaceful religion with two billion followers. We do not fear petty mockery, which does nothing to perturb our submissive commitment to Allah and the five pillars of Islam. Those who seek to belittle us simply show their own intolerance and bigotry, which do not impact us in any way. We require no resignation, no apology and no huffing and puffing from within our own rank and file. We do not descend into street mob politics. Peace be upon our noble Prophet and upon us all.”
I will dream on. I would be exuberantly, ecstatically delighted if anything like the speech above were to issue from the lips of any influential Muslim.
