The case of the teacher at the Grammar School in Batley, Northern England, against which there were angry protests from Muslims, made it to the front pages of the British media.

A few days ago, the religious studies teacher showed some of the infamous Mohammed cartoons from Charlie Hebdo magazine and talked about them with the students, The Times reported. That was exactly what happened to the French teacher Samuel Paty almost half a year ago – a jihadist waited for him after school and cut his head off.

The educator in Batley near Bradford, a town that is home to a large number of Muslims, has now realized where the real limits of freedom are in Britain in the 21st century. After loud protests from parents and Muslims who had travelled to the school, the school administration kneeled down, and issued a deeply contrite apology for the “completely unacceptable” teaching material. The teacher also had to “most sincerely” apologize. The school has opened an investigation into the incident and has suspended the teacher from duty.

Obviously, the submissive requests for forgiveness were not nearly sufficient. There are already numerous appeals from Muslim organizations circulating on the Internet, which – figuratively – challenge his right to life. For example, the local Muslim association “Purpose of Life” writes that the teacher should never teach again because of his “sadistic” offense. The Ramadhan Foundation from Manchester also raged that the teacher had made a “disgusting attack on the faith”. He should have known “how much that affects his 70 percent Muslim students”.

Several dozen Muslim demonstrators gathered in front of the school on Thursday, shouted at the hastily summoned police and blocked the entrance. Education Minister Gavin Williamson has meanwhile let his spokesman condemn the fact that there were threats against the teacher as “unacceptable”. But Williamson avoided positioning himself clearly in favour of freedom of expression. Other politicians also warned not to “pour oil on the fire” and avoided making clear statements.

After there were numerous death threats against the educator, according to the Daily Mail, on the advice of the police, he has now gone in hiding with his girlfriend somewhere at a secret location.

The Free Speech Union, a group that campaigns for freedom of expression, reacted with outrage to the fact that the school had given way to a “censorship mob” and suspended the teacher. The school is thus signalling that it is indeed a crime to show the prophet Mohammed in a picture. The publicly financed school is submitting to the Islamic understanding of a ban on images and violating its educational mandate to a critical discussion. Muslim students should feel no more hurt by Mohammed drawings than Christians by the satirical film “Life of Brian”. “In this country there is no ban on blasphemy above freedom of speech,” said Toby Young, journalist and general secretary of the Free Speech Union.

After all, on Friday students at Batley Grammar School started a petition for their teacher, demanding that his suspension be lifted. The teacher is not racist or “Islamophobic”, they said. Some 7000 signatures were collected within half a day.

In all of this, the fear of the public that “French conditions” could also spread in the UK, is palpable. There is no lack of a lively, aggressive extremist scene on the Brexit island, from which violence and assassinations have emerged again and again. Islamist-motivated attacks repeatedly shake the country, for example the triple knife murder in a park in Reading by a Syrian asylum seeker last year. Before that, an ex-prisoner convicted of ISIS propaganda had stabbed two people to death in South London. Before that, in December 2019, an Islamist participating in a rehabilitation program killed several people on London Bridge. In June 2017, three attackers also drove a pickup truck into passers-by on London Bridge and stabbed them with knives, they killed eight people and injured nearly fifty other people, some seriously. In spring 2017, a suicide bomber with a Libyan migrant background blew himself up and 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. The series of Islamist attacks has been never-ending.

And all the more amazing is the equanimity with which a large part of the British population reacted to this. Many prefer to close their eyes when Islamist fundamentalism arises, which is also taught in dozens of Islamic schools in the country. Fifteen years ago, when there was a wave of protests orchestrated around the world against the Danish Mohammed caricatures of the time, the British island was the scene of absurd scenes: Muslims raged in front of Parliament in London with posters saying “Behead those who insult Islam!”. Right next to them were British police officers, in their yellow safety vests. British “tolerance” at such moments could be rightly be mistaken for cowardice.

Toby Young of the Free Speech Union pointed out that the school’s Latin motto in Batley Forte non Ignave: Courageous, not afraid. The submission to Islamic guidelines has nonetheless taken place gradually.

https://freewestmedia.com/2021/03/27/british-teacher-hides-from-protesting-muslims-over-mohammed-cartoons/

In case you missed it on the news — easy to do since it’s rarely mentioned — Europe is in the throes of the third wave of the pandemic.

Their rollout of the vaccines has been fraught with shortages and supply problems. It’s gotten so bad that the EU has halted vaccine exports for six weeks.

Along with the increased numbers of positive test results come the dreaded — and inevitable — calls for lockdowns. Italy may as well declare a perpetual lockdown as the nation will be shuttered over the Easter holidays. Partial lockdowns in France and most other EU countries will make it a grim Easter in Europe for the second year in a row.

Germany, with Europe’s most modern healthcare system and a reputation for government organization, was actually on top of the pandemic — at first. But their well-oiled system of tracing and isolating outbreaks has fallen apart, and German numbers have been as bad as the rest of Europe’s.

Seeing an alarming spike in positive tests and hospitalizations, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a total lockdown of the country from April 1-5. There was a problem with that announcement: even experts said that a total lockdown wasn’t necessary.

The political firestorm caused Merkel to beat a hasty retreat and apologize for her “mistake.”

“We must try to slow down the third wave of the pandemic. Nevertheless, it was a mistake,” Merkel said during a press conference, according to German news outlet Deutsche Welle. “At the end of the day, I carry the last responsibility.”

“It’s now important for me to say so here. A mistake should be called a mistake and above all, it should be corrected, preferably in good time,” she added, according to the news agency.

CNBC:

Critics of the move, which included health experts and business leaders, said the lockdown could cause more harm than good, particularly the plans to allow grocery stores and supermarkets to open for a limited amount of time over the holiday — a move likely to cause crowds to gather. Others questioned the lost working hours and wages the move would entail.

“It was well reasoned, but was not really doable in such a short time,” Merkel said Wednesday, reflecting on the original lockdown proposal. “Too many questions, from missing wages through to the loss of time in factories and facilities, could not be adequately answered in time.”

Health officials in Germany are concerned that this third wave of the pandemic may be the worst yet.

DW:

Speaking at a joint press conference with Health Minister Spahn, Wieler appealed for people to reduce their social contacts over the Easter holidays.

Although 10% of the German population has now received a first dose of the vaccine, the gains from vaccinations are being eaten away by the high infection rate, he said.

Spahn also cautioned that the current trajectory of infections could overwhelm Germany’s hospitals in the next few weeks.

“At the moment, the figures are rising too fast and the variants are making the situation especially dangerous,” he said. “If this continues unchecked, we run the risk of our health system could reach its breaking point in April.”

Germany had more than 21,500 new cases on Friday — 4,000 more cases than were reported daily last week. Since the country has barely emerged from the previous lockdowns, those numbers reflect the futility of locking down an entire nation for a year, making little progress in slowing the spread of the virus.

Merkel will get away with her “apology” in the media, but what do ordinary Germans think? Merkel’s popularity has plummeted during the last year as people get angrier and angrier at a government that seems powerless to do anything about the pandemic.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/26/angela-merkel-admits-mistake-in-ordering-easter-lockdown-n1435223

As chairman of the largest mosque community in Göttingen, Keskin was also a public speaker – whether at the anniversary of the synagogue building or at the New Year’s reception of the Catholic Church. Again and again he pleaded for peace and tolerance. Then in February he suddenly resigned. In the social networks on the internet, Keskin apparently showed a different face. The Lower Saxony regional association of the “Sozialistische Jugend – Die Falken” (Socialist Youth – The Falcons) accuses the former chairman of the German-Islamic Mosque Association (DITIB) Göttingen of, among other things, hate messages against Jews and Armenians. (…)

Shortly after the allegations became known, he admitted to the Catholic News Agency (KNA) that the posts were his. However, he claims that he does not have an anti-Semitic attitude. He never said that the Holocaust was a lie. The controversial posts were primarily directed against Israeli policy. And he would continue to criticise Israeli policy, Keskin told the Catholic News Agency (KNA). He wanted to take legal action against the accusations.

The Göttingen public prosecutor’s office is now investigating Keskin. He is accused of incitement of the people ” by means of anti-Semitic propaganda”, senior public prosecutor Andreas Buick said at the request of the broadcaster NDR.

https://www.mena-watch.com/staatsanwalt-ermittelt-gegen-ehemaligen-ditib-vorsitzenden-in-goettingen-2/?no_cache=1616734036&fbclid=IwAR2Rb1-Dax9vQOjIkOQRkTAiaRu-xNfsbYPikpdhrmTE_nUQo8-zGPCoXu4

The AfD has called on the federal government to take tough action against refugees entering Germany through Greece despite the fact that they already have protection status Greece. Reportedly, there are a thousand such cases every month.

“Germany must put an end to this asylum tourism from Greece immediately and prevent entries. It cannot keep occuring that the Greek authorities issue travel documents to asylum seekers who then can board the next plane to Germany, their chosen host country,” said Leif-Erik Holm, the AfD parliamentary group deputy leader in the Bundestag.

Holm had previously asked the federal government what steps it takes against the entry of asylum seekers already registered in Greece as the current rules governing asylum indicate that migrants should remain in the first safe country they enter. The Federal Ministry of the Interior largely gave real answer based on a request from the German newspaper Junge Freiheit. The matter is being discussed with representatives of the Greek government and authorities, stated the ministry.

Germany applies the rule “that those refugees affected generally have travel documents issued by Greece and are therefore fundamentally entitled to enter and stay in Germany for a short time,” emphasized the Interior Ministry.

At the same time, the federal government admitted that it had no information on the total number of asylum seekers who were already in Germany and who had already been granted international protection in another member state.

Holm also considers it unacceptable “that Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has been watching this going on for months that it must now be called deliberate.”

Holm added that the federal government openly admitting it has no idea whether asylum seekers in Germany have entered asylum proceedings in other countries “is a first-class scandal.”

Holm stated that while at the moment every German traveler has to face general suspicion from authorities, illegal migrants travel by plane every day into Germany. The AfD parliamentary deputy had already called last August not to treat German vacationers like Covid-19 threats.

As Die Welt reported at the beginning of March, around 1,000 people a month settle in the Federal Republic of Germany who has already been recognized as refugees in Greece, “without Germany doing anything effective against it.”

According to the daily, around 2,100 people applied for asylum at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees in January and February despite already receiving protection status in Greece. Holm had used this as a stepping stone for his inquiry. He concluded that the federal government is not doing anything effective against this type of immigration.

In addition to the asylum seekers who have been provided with travel documents by the Greek authorities, Germany accepts a large number of refugees from the Greek islands. The federal government had agreed to do this repeatedly, most recently after the fire in the Greek Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos last September. As an AfD survey recently revealed, Germany has already flown in 2,380 such migrants from Greece since January 2020.

https://rmx.news/article/article/put-an-end-to-this-asylum-tourism-afd-protests-as-migrants-with-greek-passports-travel-to-germany-by-the-thousands