A Tale of Two Cancellations

Oral Roberts University

Some of you may be aware that Cinderella team Oral Roberts has made the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament in the U.S. What you may not be aware of are the calls for the team to be ejected from the tournament, including an opinion piece penned by USA Today editor Hemal Jhaveri, who writes:

Yet, Oral Roberts, with its decrees banning homosexual conduct, stating that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and specifically banning male students from wearing makeup, earned a ticket to the Big Dance even though the university’s foundations expressly go against the very things the NCAA say they value. The fact is, any and all anti-LGBTQ+ language in any school’s polices should ban them from NCAA competition.(1)

So what's being said here is because Oral Roberts is a Christian university that follows orthodox dogma, they have no place in the NCAA tournament, regardless of merit. That there is no room in society for any institution that doesn't obey the woke supremacist narrative. Comply or be banned, that's the message.

Batley Grammar School

Let's contrast that with what's going on at the Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire of the UK, where a teacher has been suspended for offending the Muslim community for showing students a selection of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad - sourced from the publication Charlie Hebdo(2) - in a Religious Studies lesson about what constitutes blasphemy.

Despite apologies to the Muslim community by Batley administrators - and suspending the teacher - daily protests outside the school have forced administrators to suspend classes and keep all students at home. What do the protesters want? The teacher to be fired.

The person [the Prophet Muhammad] who you are attacking here, we hold more dear to us than the air we breathe. This is how deep this is to our community.(3)

He should never teach again. Even if they say this was a mistake, how can it be? How could a teacher possibly not know how much hurt this picture has caused? We’ll keep coming here until he is gone.(3)

We would not like any form of extremism, any extremist viewpoints, to be taught to children.(4)

Citizen NGO group MEND(5) issued the following statement:

Deputy chair Dr Shazad Amin, said he saw "no problem" with blasphemy being discussed at the school but said the particular image shown to pupils was "deeply offensive" and "furthered stereotypes and anti-Islamic tropes". As a result, he said people in the local community had "a right to feel hurt and a right to feel angry" but called for them to allow the matter to be properly investigated. He said parents were "fairly positive" with the action taken so far by the school. (4)

For her part, former Conservative Party chairwoman Baroness Warsi had this to say:

(M)any pupils were left distressed because of what happened. It's about safeguarding children and making sure the school look again, as should every school, to ensure that every pupil in their school is being taught in a way which creates a positive, unifying learning environment.(4)

So in the UK, we have the exact opposite from Oral Roberts, where religious orthodoxy is given such weight as to challenge social norms regarding free speech.

Perhaps it's as little as understanding that no one cares about offending Christians, yet do care about offending Muslims, for reasons that woke supremacists cannot adequately explain, nor are they inclined to. Ultimately, what we have here is a tale of two cancellations: the cancellation of Oral Roberts for being "extremist" and the cancellation of free speech at Batley for being "extremist."

(1) [ftw.usatoday.com]
(2) Which you may recall, had its offices attacked in 2015 by Islamists, killing 12 staffers.
(3) [independent.co.uk]
(4) [bbc.com]
(5) Non-governmental organization; Muslim Engagment and Development