It's heartening to see that there is a gathering consensus across the political divide against the proposed new crime of incitement to religious hatred. As the Telegraph reports, the campaigners include
the comedian Rowan Atkinson, who has raised concerns that comics like himself could find themselves in the dock for lampooning religion or the religious. The Home Secretary has denied this, and tried to claim that the impact of the new law upon legitimate free speech will be negligible:

'During a Commons debate on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, he said it was not intended that telling jokes about a faith should be caught by the offence, which carries a seven-year jail term. But critics said the wording - which does not contain a definition of religion - was too loose and represented a threat to free speech. It says religious hatred "means hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief or lack of religious belief''.

'Mr Blunkett said: "The offence will not criminalise material that just stirs up ridicule, prejudice, dislike, contempt or anger or which simply causes offence. A person who does not intend to stir up hatred is not guilty if they did not know that their words, behaviour, written material, recording or programmes were threatening, abusive or insulting. The offences do not apply to anything that takes place in one's own home. All prosecutions require the consent of the Attorney General, which will prevent the offences being misused through private prosecutions." '

This seems disingenuous. Judgments about the point at which insults or abuse turn into incitement are utterly subjective. The proposal is an invitation to mischief by those who wish to shut down inconvenient debate. There is a worrying tendency to define a widening range of unfashionable views as 'thought crimes', which either cannot be uttered without incurring social opprobrium or, worse, even attracting the heavy hand of the police hate crimes unit. For similar reasons, I am even uneasy about the law prohibiting incitement to racial hatred. But as Rowan Atkinson oberved, there is a significant difference between this and outlawing religious incitement. Attacking people on account of their race is to attack what they are. Attacking people on account of their religion is to attack what they think. The former is uncivilised. The later is an integral part of civilised and liberal discourse.

Religion is an idea. There should be no attempt in a liberal society to shut down debate over ideas. Moreover, religion is an idea which almost inevitably arouses hatred, which finds expression in vituperative debate. Trying to prevent that vituperation from being expressed would effectively criminalise much of literature, including various sacred or religious texts themselves. The blasphemy law, which has largely fallen into desuetude, should be repealed, not effectively extended in this back-door way. Noxious ideas have to be defeated by argument, not by being suppressed. Incitement to violence is another matter. There are already laws to deal with that, which unfortunately tend not to be used as often as they ought.

The religious hatred law is being introduced as a sop to the Muslim community in Britain, which is agitated over what it perceives as public hostility towards it since 9/11. As Atkinson oberved, while one should be alive to any real problems British Muslims might be experiencing, criminalising incitement to religious hatred is the wrong solution. After all, even moderate Muslim spokesmen say repeatedly that anyone who talks about Islamic terrorism is an 'Islamophobe'. Such people would therefore probably find themselves the target of legal challenge for conducting a perfectly proper and necessary debate.

As we can see from Australia where a similar law was introduced, it would put people in the dock for expressing entirely legitimate views about religion and would greatly exacerbate religious and cultural divisions. It is a thoroughly bad, dangerous proposal and should have no place in a liberal society.