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A teacher has been dragged into an extraordinary Islamophobia row after citing 9/11 while rebuking pupils for clashing with a gay Muslim campaigner.
The campaigner, Khakan Qureshi, was invited to Wood Green Academy in Wednesbury, West Midlands, last week to share his experience of coming out.
But in a testy Q&A exchange with sixth-formers, Mr Qureshi faced hostile questioning, with one student asking: ‘Do you agree that being gay and Muslim is wrong?’, and he later received death threats.
Angry at the way Mr Qureshi was treated, the teacher later lectured pupils on tolerance.
But it resulted in a furious backlash when he was filmed referring to the September 11 attackers as Muslims rather than terrorists.
In his rebuke, the teacher said: ‘We live in a diverse and tolerant country. We are tolerant of different religions. Twenty-one years ago a group of Muslims smashed aeroplanes into buildings to kill thousands of people. At that stage people stood up and said, “No, we must not condemn Muslims for what a few have done.”
‘Because we are a tolerant society, and that means we may not like some things that you say but you do have the right to say them.’
DEATH THREATS: Khakan Qureshi (pictured), was invited to Wood Green Academy in Wednesbury, West Midlands, last week to share his experience of coming out but he later received death threats
Police are now investigating death threats and online abuse received by Mr Qureshi. The school is understood to have reported the incident to the counter-extremism programme, Prevent, and – with tensions running high – is liaising with community leaders.
The school serves a large and diverse area of the West Midlands and about half its students are Muslim. A complaint sent to the school by hundreds of pupils and parents said: ‘Why did he use the word Muslims as opposed to terrorists?
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‘He has linked terrorism directly to Muslims and Islam. His tone is extremely aggressive and I struggle to understand how this is considered appropriate behaviour.’ Last night, the teacher declined to comment.
Mr Qureshi, 52, told the MoS that a ‘few hard-core’ pupils did not even let him finish his talk before asking him a barrage of questions. He said that he gave a similar talk in 2020 about being gay and Muslim and was received warmly by pupils.
But this time, he was warned by teachers that he might face a more hostile audience as a number of Muslim pupils had moved to the Academy from a local faith school.
Mr Qureshi said: ‘They kept on saying that you cannot be gay and Muslim, because that contradicts the Qur’an.’
He added that the teacher made the reference to 9/11 because he was prompted by what he himself had said earlier in his talk.
‘I told the audience that there was only one time in my life when I did not identify myself as Muslim, and that was after the 9/11 attacks, when Muslims were being discriminated and vilified.’
ATROCITY: The Twin Towers on 9/11
Mr Qureshi said he received numerous death threats last week, and over 100 hateful messages on social media, and had notified police.
The school said in a statement: ‘A number of videos are currently being circulated on social media which shows a member of our staff addressing students… While the school has yet to conclude its review of this matter, it is clear that some of the videos have been cropped… We apologise for any upset or distress that has been caused by this incident.’
West Midlands police said: ‘We are working with the school and looking into the content of the videos.’
