Iranian-Tied UK Human Rights Group Reacts To Batley Cartoon Affair

The Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC) has called on the UK’s Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary to retract his con­dem­na­tion of the protests in Bat­ley; West York­shire, cen­tered on a school­teacher who showed car­toons of the Prophet Muham­mad in class. Accord­ing to an IHRC press release:

March 26, 2021 IHRC is deeply con­cerned at the state­ments by Gavin Williamson, Sec­re­tary of State for Edu­ca­tion, that effec­tive­ly accus­es con­cerned par­ents of vio­lence against the school and mak­ing threats. Nei­ther of these claims seems sub­stan­ti­at­ed by video footage* of the par­ent protest out­side the school. These claims first­ly dis­tract from the core issue – what appears to be a delib­er­ate racist and humil­i­at­ing provo­ca­tion by a teacher against Mus­lim pupils. Sec­ond­ly they demonise Mus­lim par­ents, stu­dents and the com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al. There needs to an imme­di­ate retrac­tion of these state­ments by the DfE and a strong com­mit­ment to the right to basic respect and dig­ni­ty that Mus­lims and all cit­i­zens should have respect­ed by this government.

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The Islam­ic Human Rights Com­mis­sion (IHRC) is a UK-based NGO found­ed in 1997. Since 2007, it has had Spe­cial Con­sul­ta­tive Sta­tus with the Eco­nom­ic and Social Coun­cil (ECOSOC) of the Unit­ed Nations.  Its web­site says it works with dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions from Mus­lim and non-Mus­lim back­grounds “to cam­paign for jus­tice for all peo­ples regard­less of their racial, con­fes­sion­al, or polit­i­cal back­ground.” The IHRC is con­sid­ered sup­port­ive of the Iran­ian regime, and for many years has been cen­tral to orga­niz­ing the annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Quds Day, ini­ti­at­ed by the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion­ary regime.

For more on the IHRC, go here.

Pre­vi­ous report­ing by the Glob­al Infor­ma­tion Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) on the IHRC has included:

• A Decem­ber 2020 report on the IHRC’s annu­al Islam­o­pho­bia Con­fer­ence, which com­pared a French pro­pos­al to what Hitler did to the Jews in Germany.

• A Decem­ber 2020 report on an IHRC webi­nar held in ear­ly Novem­ber 2020 on the Boy­cott, Divest­ment, and Sanc­tions (BDS) cam­paign against Israel, describ­ing Israel’s regime in terms of set­tler colo­nial­ism and apartheid.

• An Octo­ber 2020 report on a book launch in Tehran, which was pub­lished by the IHRC, and ana­lyzes the work of three lead­ing Amer­i­can think-tanks, accus­ing them of help­ing to frame U.S. poli­cies against the Islam­ic world and Islam­ic resis­tance [muqawamah] movements.

• An Octo­ber 2020 report on a webi­nar the IHRC held on the ‘One state solu­tion’ for the Palestine/Israeli con­flict with British and Israeli speakers.