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Imam Mohammed Amin Pandor addressed the crowd after his meeting with the school principal.
“What happened here, we are upset,” said the Imam. “What has happened is totally unacceptable and we have made sure they are aware of it.
“The teacher has been suspended. They cannot just fire him, they must follow their due process.
“We have asked for an investigation, an investigation to be independent. We are going to work with the school to make sure things like this don’t happen.”
On Wednesday night, messages were distributed on social media, encouraging people to protest at the school.
“It is imperative that we all come forward to demand the resignation of this teacher as an absolute minimum and fulfill our duty to uphold the honor of RasoolAllah,” read a message on Facebook.
The message, which purported to name the teacher in question, urged people to come and “defend the honor of our prophet Muhammad.”
Kibble had tried to ease the situation by sending a letter to the parents earlier this week.
“The school would like to thank the parents who contacted us on Monday, March 22, to highlight their concerns with a resource used in an RS lesson that day,” he said.
“Upon investigation, it was clear that the resource used in the lesson was completely inappropriate and had the capacity to cause great offense to members of our school community for which we would like to offer a sincere and complete apology.”
He went on to explain that the school had taken “immediate action” after its investigation, including removing the resource from the materials and suspending the content of that lesson from the work plan.
“As an added precaution, we will conduct a formal review of the RS curriculum to ensure that no other resources or statements are inappropriate and we will take appropriate action as necessary,” he said.
Parents were sent a text message this morning asking the children to stay home “due to the disturbances outside of school.”
They were told “if your child has not left yet, please leave him at home as school will start at 10 am”.
In another social media post asking parents to protest at school, the religious teacher was named. The Facebook post said the teacher had shown the students “derogatory cartoons” and suggested that they were the same ones published by Charlie Hebdo, the French magazine that was subsequently the target of an armed terrorist attack.
In the Facebook post, Zeeshan Mohammed wrote: “A teacher deliberately showed derogatory cartoons (French cartoons) of our beloved Prophet Muhammad and told the students that he had the right to show this. He did not apologize or accept any wrongdoing when he was challenged by parents.
“It is imperative that * ALL OF US * come forward to demand the resignation of this teacher as an absolute minimum …”
In October last year, a French school teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by an Islamist terrorist just over a week after showing students in a free speech class a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. The cartoon had first been published by Charlie Hebdo magazine in 2012, sparking three years later an armed attack on the magazine’s offices in which 12 people were killed.
The Batley school’s decision to suspend the teacher will spark a fierce debate about free speech balanced with concern not to offend religious groups.
Dr. Paul Stott, associate member of the Henry Jackson Society, said Wednesday: “Secondary schools have a duty to present students with controversial ideas and debates, as part of a process of teaching children about how to think, in instead of what, “the UK must not yield its policy to angry mobs at school gates or to so-called community leaders.
“The school’s censorship approach appears to be the exact opposite of the approach in France, where demands for a cleanup of classroom discussions by Islamist activists were resolutely rejected by the government, following the horrific murder of teacher Samuel Paty.” .
Batley Grammar School, which was founded in 1612 by the Reverend William Lee, counts poet Roger McGough, former BBC Director General John Birt, and Olympic swimmer Francesca Halsall among its former students.
Among his students is the 18th century native Joseph Priestley, who is credited with the discovery of oxygen and is considered one of the founding fathers of Chemistry, among his students.
Another Old Batelian, as former students are known, is Sir Willans Richardson, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1928 for his work on thermionic emission.
Originally an academically selective school, Batley Grammar became a paying institution in 1978 and since 2011 it has been a free school. It is now part of the Batley Multi Academy Trust, a group of five state schools in the local area.
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