Hello and welcome to the spike podcast I'm Fraser Myers and with me in the studio today we have

Spikes editor Tom Slater and joining us down the line from Luton we have Spiked columnist

Rakeeb Essan coming up on the show today we'll be talking about the Wakefield

Coran controversy, the new Northern Ireland Brexit deal, and the lockdown files.

So last week a schoolboy was suspended and was sent death threats for allegedly

desecrating the Quran. This incident has involved the local Muslim community,

the police have even got involved, and strangely the police, rather than

siding with the boy who's been given death threats, have actually seemed to be siding with the mob.

They've logged his scuffing of the Quran as a hate incident.

Ricky, do you want to tell us a little bit about the background to this story?

Well, ultimately when it comes to this story, I find it to be a failure of governance.

Apparently, we have a situation where there was some kind of dare and someone lost a

gamer call of duty and brought in the Quran to school and during this particular day at the school

this Quran suffered damage,

damage, those reports of smudging, etc.

And what unfolded from that was what I'd considered to be an appalling state of affairs. The boy involved is said to be autistic.

There's some kind of extra judicial hearing which involved local

councillors, religious figures and chief inspector and if truth be told there are people who are saying that religious tolerance is a

fundamental British value. I would also remind them that we do live in a liberal democracy

where there are no blasphemy laws enough. This isn't about defending faith in my

opinion or protecting religious beliefs. In my view this is a kind of Islamist style regulation of the

public sphere which has no democratic consent.

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