Utterly dismayingly, the Churches' Commission on Inter-Faith Relations has come out in favour of the proposed law against incitement to religious hatred. Various faith communities have signed a statement of support, including the Chairman of the Committee for Other Faiths of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, the Secretary of the Free Churches Group, the General Secretary of the Hindu Council UK, and the newly-retired Director General of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. They say:

'The current gap in the law is not only inequitable; it is also dangerous. It leaves the way open for extremists to incite hatred of religious groups not covered by the law at present, setting one group against another in ways which could significantly undermine the good community relations painstakingly developed by ethnic and faith communities in Britain over recent decades. Where this happens it is not just specific communities who are vulnerable – the bonds of our common society are put under strain'.

This is crazy.

It is the proposed new law which will generate hatred and set group against group. These silly signatories don't realise that this law will as likely as not put them in the dock.They have naively fallen for the glib and worthless Home Office assurances that the new law won't criminalise legitimate criticism of religion, and will protect not religion itself but individuals from harm.

The fact remains that definitions of hatred, offence, criticism etc are wholly subjective and at the mercy of whoever is interpreting them at any time; that there is nothing in the law to stop the criminalisation of bona fide religious criticism; that assurances that this bill sets a much higher threshold for prosecution than the equivalent law does in Australia (where two pastors have been convicted for insulting Islam) are worthless precisely because of this subjective element; that the Home Office's own guidance says a prosecution might be triggered '

in response to an extreme racist organisation widely distributing material setting out a range of insulting and highly inflammatory reasons for hating Islam'--

[my emphasis] so it will cover attacks on religion as well as on people because it almost inevitably conflates the two; if anyone thinks the requirement to obtain the Attorney-General's consent to any prosecution is an effective safeguard against abuse, they need their head examined; and anyway, the real purpose is not to obtain prosecutions so much as intimidate people into self-censorship, which will without a doubt happen.

Inter-faith committees tend to produce a Panglossian consensus which in the current climate is absolutely lethal. Wake up, folks, and smell the coffee!

Posted by melanie at January 19, 2005