Blasphemy row teacher fears he will be murdered
THE religious education teacher at the centre of a blasphemy row is an ‘emotional wreck’ and terrified of being killed, his father said yesterday.
The man’s life has been turned upside down since he sparked angry protests by showing a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire last week.
His father said he had gone into hiding fearing for his life and ‘knows he’s not going to be able to return to work or live in Batley’. He added that the school had ‘thrown my son under a bus’.
‘He keeps breaking down crying and says that it’s all over for him,’ the father said. ‘He is worried that he and his family are all going to be killed.’
In October, teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded near his school in France after showing the same picture to pupils, and the Batley teacher is frightened of being targeted in a similar manner by extremists.
The father told MailOnline: ‘Look what happened to the teacher in France who was killed for doing the same thing. Eventually they will get my son and he knows this.
‘His whole world has been turned upside down. He’s devastated and crushed.
‘When he starts speaking, he just breaks down and cries. He’s become an emotional wreck. He feels that everything is broken and to be honest, it’s hard to console him at the moment because that is the truth.’
The father criticised the school for its handling of the incident. Batley Grammar suspended the teacher – who the Daily Mail is not naming – and headteacher Gary Kibble apologised to parents for the ‘inappropriate’ use of the images.
The father said: ‘The school has thrown my son under a bus. The lesson that he delivered in which the picture of the Prophet Muhammad was shown was part of the curriculum – it had been approved by the school. Other teachers have done exactly the same thing.
‘So why is my son being victimised like this? The school should have come out fighting for him and made it clear to the protesters that if offence was caused, then it was not my son’s fault. It was the school’s policy to show this picture, it wasn’t an individual decision made by him.’
He added: ‘Even if he gets his job back, how can he possibly return to Batley Grammar School? It will be far too risky.’
The father said the whole family was worried about their security and his own wife had also gone into hiding.
‘This whole incident has had a devastating impact on us, and we are all scared about the situation we find ourselves in,’ he said.
Muslim parents who protested at the school gates last week demanded that the teacher never be allowed to work in education again. But he has received strong support from politicians and the public who see the incident as an important free-speech issue.
Protesters were slammed for ‘ unacceptable threats and intimidation’ amid calls for calm from community leaders.
A petition calling for the teacher to keep his job has received more than 63,000 signatures. The school is carrying out a review of the incident.
‘School threw my son under a bus’