Jewish Chronicle, 22 October 2004

The Home Secretary let it be known this week that he intends to abolish the law of blasphemy, at the same time as introducing a new crime of incitement to religious hatred.

Abolishing blasphemy is long overdue. Making a crime out of offending religious sensibilities is surely an indefensible relic of a bygone age of religious control over public life. Legislating against insult criminalises opinion and is therefore oppressive. There is no good reason why religious feelings should be protected rather than any other.

Once it has abolished blasphemy, however, the government intends to bring it in again by the back door — but this time as a wider and much more dangerous measure. Outlawing incitement to religious hatred may seem fair since it will cover all faiths, whereas blasphemy protects only Christianity.

In fact, it is specifically aimed at pleasing the Muslim community. Since Jews and Sikhs are designated a race, they are covered by the law prohibiting incitement to racial hatred. Muslims complain that this unfairly discriminates against them.

But this is surely to miss the point. Racial hatred is directed against people who have no option but to be what they are. It is therefore an unambiguous attack upon people as people. Religion, by contrast, is a principal arena of impassioned argument and disputation. What it stands for is intrinsically controversial and lends itself almost by definition to giving offence to others.

Actually, the offence of racial hatred also makes me uneasy, as does any hate law which is tantamount to ‘thought’ crime. Of course, innocent Muslims should be protected against attack. But there are other laws which could be used to prevent actual assault against anyone, such as incitement to violence.

The fact is, though, that these laws are virtually never used. The prosecuting authorities are nervous of any controversy that may ensue from criminalising public expression. Yet now we are to get another law that does just that.

The main reason why existing laws are seldom used is surely that there is little pressure to do so. But there is a significant clamour from Muslims to use a law against religious hatred. And government and other establishment figures are terrified to hold out against such pressure — even though much of it is deeply dubious.

For Muslim activists persistently claim that anyone who even so much as mentions the word ‘Islamic’ in connection with extremism or terror is an Islamophobe. This is a frequent complaint by the Muslim Council of Britain — which nevertheless informed us that the controversial visitor to Britain Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who has expressed violent Jew-hatred and support for human bombs, was deeply respected by millions of Muslims around the world.

This is nothing to do with preventing incitement to hatred. It is rather a crude attempt to censor the truth and silence legitimate debate. And there are plenty of useful idiots who will endorse it.

Just look at what happened when Baroness Thatcher criticised Muslim clerics for not speaking out loudly enough against 9/11. The editor of Muslim News demanded that her ‘case’ be sent to the Crown Prosecution Service. He was backed by notables such as Lord Heseltine, who accused her of fomenting prejudice against Muslims, and the MP George Galloway, who said if the law against incitement to religious hatred had been in place, he would have insisted on her prosecution.

Such a law would be used to prevent criticism of Islam itself. As the chairman of the Liverpool Islamic Institute has said, its real targets would be the ‘mockery and ridicule’ of religion. This, of course, was the very issue that was used to threaten the life of Salman Rushdie. The proposed new law would be a victory for all those who burned ‘The Satanic Verses’. It would be a victory for terror.

It would also silence those supremely brave Muslims who are starting to speak out for the decent and civilised virtues of their religion against the horrors being perpetrated in its name. Aisha Siddiqa Qureshi, for example, wrote in Muslim World Today that radical Islam threatened to ‘subjugate the world and murder, enslave or convert all non-Muslims’.

Such courageous Muslims need our support and protection. But this new law risks cutting the ground from under their feet.

British Jews are experiencing an alarming upsurge in Judeophobia, ranging from articles denouncing a sinister global Jewish conspiracy to attacks on Jews in the street. The latter are almost certainly connected to the former. Yet it would be quite wrong to prosecute the writers of those inflammatory and hate-inciting articles.

This is a liberal society, and our beleaguered liberal attitudes must be defended. That means exposing, pillorying and defeating such vile opinions by constantly reasserting truth and reason against the falsehoods and irrationality they embody. It does not mean criminalising thought and censoring argument which exposes the truth. That way lies not the defence of freedom, but its betrayal.

Posted by melanie at October 23, 2004