A West Midlands school has been criticised for failing to “teach controversial issues in a way that is safe for everyone”, after a gay Muslim speaker was challenged by students and later received death threats on social media.
An external report on Wood Green Academy in Wednesbury was commissioned after the incident in November last year, in which students questioned the speaker on his views about homosexuality and Islam.
Khakan Qureshi, founder of the Birmingham Asian LGBT group, was invited to the school’s sixth form to speak on “diversity in the face of adversity”, but the session appeared to descend into chaos, videos posted on social media showed.
After Qureshi said there wasn’t anything in the Qur’an that said homosexuality was a sin, students could be heard saying he was “offending people” and “advocating the wrong thing”.
Teachers intervened, with one describing the students’ comments as “homophobia” and another using a reference to 9/11 to explain how the UK was a “tolerant society”.
