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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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https://news.sky.com/story/muslim-student-loses-legal-challenge-against-michaela-community-schools-prayer-ban-13116385

In what is perhaps the first win Secularism has experienced in a long time, a high court judge has ruled against a challenge brought forward by a muslim pupil claiming that lack of prayer rooms at hier school were a substantial opposition to her faith. The judge's reasoning is that the school explicitly advertised itself as secular and would not permit certain activities in an attempt to minise friction between pupils. This outcome was accomplished in spite of threats and bomb scares made to the school and criminal damage to both the school and a few of the homes of the staff who worked there.

Michaela Community School is not a typical institution, hence why it was not only able to fight back against Islamists, but also win. Situated in a particularly deprived part of London, it boasts extremely successful grades compared to not only the borough but the wider country as a whole. It accomplishes this through rules many consider extreme, including no talking in corridors, demerits for failing to remove your book from your bag and flip to the correct page in under 10 seconds and mirrors removed from bathrooms in order to avoid distractions.

Its head, Katharine Birbalsingh, is not a typical educator. An Indo-Guyanese woman and once a Conservative advisor for social mobility, her comments on education, society and the role of its members routinely antagonise left of centre commentators. Michaela is a free school, indepedent of the local authority and thus she is immunised against potential attempts by that local authority and other insitutions to instill accepted views into her school. This is I think a large part of why she won - she ultimately only answers to herself and those parents in her community who are in favour of her school and the way she runs it, and can thus ignore detractors in a way that an LEA controlled, union dependent teacher can't.

in a long time

Really? I get that it’s the U.K., but I’m skeptical that the state is getting too cozy with any particular religion.

This looks like the right decision.

The curling into a fetal surrender position is quite comfortable. The teacher in Batley is still in hiding, the groveling of the West Yorkshire mum is still on full display to see, and lets not get started on the lack of consequences for the grooming gangs. I would say the UK establishment and population are indeed quite comfortable with one particular religion, and will continue to be salami sliced as the London elite gaslight Norf FC gammons that this isn't happening and Noticing is proof of their systemic racism.

the lack of consequences for the grooming gangs

I mean hundreds, if not thousands, of people in those gangs have been arrested over the last 5 years. They just get sentenced to relatively short sentences because that’s what the sentencing guidelines say is owed for their offenses.

They just get sentenced to relatively short sentences because that’s what the sentencing guidelines say is owed for their offenses.

And then not deported because activist judges say things like "he might be unfairly stigmatised in his home culture for being a child rapist" or "this child rapist needs anti-schizophrenia medication that he can't get in his home country so he must stay here".

The grooming gang predators need to be whipped on a weekly basis followed by a promise upon release that if they ever get caught again it'll be immediate castration plus twice the sentence they just served. It's the only language they understand.

Unfortunately Westerners are too far gone at this point and will not listen to groups that have actual historical experience of properly subjugating the excesses of these people. At this point what can you even do...

Or simply declared outlaw and exposed to the tender mercies of their victim’s families.

Presumably they meant the time period during which there weren't any consequences.

As much as I agree that the failure to put and keep offenders behind bars is a result of generous laws requiring exhaustive investigations and light sentencing guidelines for humanistic as logistical purposes, it is impossible to wipe the stain of Labours political correctness from the grooming gang issue. Literally every statement from Labour about grooming gangs complains about how the Far Right is fixated on this issue and that actually most sex crime is done by white people (82% of UK population) so these stupid racists better shut up for the sake of diversity. Starmer seems to have clamped down on Momentums Corbyn-era excesses but Labour still wants to push the spotlight away from the Kashmir voters forming the Red Wall.