On a dare involving three of his friends, an autistic student at a British high school brought a copy of Quran into school last week. One of the four then inadvertently dropped the book, damaging it slightly, and the whole group was suspended as punishment. Two days later, the school’s principal, a police officer, a member of the municipal council, and a local imam gathered to address the incident at a local mosque—where the imam proceeded to proclaim, “We will never tolerate disrespect of the holy Quran, never! We will sacrifice our lives for it.” Tom Slater comments:

While rumors swirled that the book had been burnt and spat on—in truth, it was barely damaged—the autistic boy at the center of it all began to receive death threats. Yes, death threats—which, unlike disrespecting holy books, are actually (and legitimately) a criminal matter in the United Kingdom. But the students who issued these threats are off the hook. Akef Akbar, [the town council member], made this clear at the Friday meeting, while sitting next to the mother of the autistic student. “To her credit,” Akbar said, “she understands the situation and has advised the police that she does not want any of these children [who sent threats to her son] to be prosecuted, and she only asks that her son is not harmed.” “He’s absolutely petrified,” the mother, who is unnamed, told the meeting later on: “But I don’t want anybody to be prosecuted because of the stupidity of my son and his friends.”

This is chilling. This mother was effectively begging for her son’s safety, while the school and police were apparently more concerned about protecting religious bigots’ hurt feelings. Indeed, the response of the school and police runs the risk of contributing to the threat posed to these boys. By suspending those students and logging their behavior as a “hate incident,” the school and police are effectively saying that the mob has a point—that the boys should be punished for “disrespecting” Islam’s holy book.

Here’s the thing. The more we capitulate to religious bigotry the more we inflame it.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.