No First Amendment in Great Britain?

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Religious hatred is no laughing matter

Why we'll outlaw the persecution of belief

David Blunkett
Sunday December 12, 2004
The Observer

Did you hear the one about the comedian and the Home Secretary? If it wasn't so serious it would be funny.
It's been suggested by some comics that my proposal to make inciting religious hatred an offence prohibits gags about religion. I think that's a joke. By couching their campaign in terms of freedom of speech, they know they have created a flight of fantasy worthy of the most surreal stand-up. But here's the punchline: nothing I've suggested is an attack on people's rights to legitimately criticise religion or make jokes about it.

Instead, what we are doing is offering the same protection to followers of religion as we do to racial minorities. That is, making it illegal to stir up hatred against people because of their religious beliefs.

I believe those who oppose this provision would be dismayed if they understood the current limits and loopholes of the present laws.

For example, how can a modern society say Jews are protected (rightly, because they are covered by race laws, rather than religion), yet Muslims and Christians are not? Can it be right that hatred based on deliberate and provocative untruths about a person's religion remains unchallenged?

I'm as keen as the next person to preserve the right to free speech. That's why strong safeguards will ensure this provision is not used as a catch-all to silence people. But there are worries. And I need to address them. Nor is this a ploy for votes. I suggested precisely this three years ago, just after a general election.

The offence only covers hatred stirred up against people deliberately targeted because of religious beliefs or lack of them. It is not simple dislike or hatred of their beliefs; it's not a new blasphemy law by the back door. Nor is it an assault on people's right to disapprove of beliefs, teachings or practices of a religion. It's about tackling people who set out to whip up hatred, not about stopping people telling jokes - however offensive.

The Attorney General will have to approve each prosecution; courts confronted by such cases must remember their obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights so that free speech and freedom of religion are preserved.

We recognise the gravity of what we're proposing, but believe it will help make communities safer. In return, I ask my critics to recognise the violence, damage and pain that extremist groups can cause through their hatred of people characterized only by their faith.

That this offence is needed is not in doubt. Both the police and religious groups back it. In evidence to the Lords Select Committee on Religious Offences, the Association of Chief Police Officers said extremist material distributed in Bradford was a significant factor in the build-up to the Bradford riots. The BNP got nearly one in 10 of the votes in Yorkshire in the European elections. We also know from the police that extremist groups try to avoid the laws on inciting racial hatred by focusing on the religion of their target instead.

I don't believe any of my critics agree with this outrageous behaviour and wish to see it untackled. But we don't currently have the powers to stop it.

Much extremist activity falls short of directly inciting people to violence or other crimes and so is not caught by laws on incitement. Neither does the Public Order Act, used to protect groups of people from harassment, deal with the problem.

Stirring up religious hatred in these circumstances is precisely the kind of activity the new offence would tackle. The provision protects people and not ideologies.

Not only does this clause make sense in itself, it also makes sense as part of the Government's wider reforms to build a fairer, more tolerant society. We've introduced tougher penalties for religious and racial hate crime, supported inter-faith networks and are currently working on a response to the Strength and Diversity consultation paper.

The Government wants to be able to attack extremism and hatred wherever it occurs. We're happy to take criticism of our proposal; indeed we'll look at suggestions for improving it. But it's a shame when those who cherish the right to free speech fail to use it responsibly and criticise a proposal they misunderstand.

· The writer is Home Secretary

The Wrap: A worm's eye view

Monday December 13, 2004

David Blunkett's proposals to outlaw religious hatred are bad, says Andrew Brown - but so are most of the arguments ranged against it
I don't like the idea of a law banning religious hatred. But most of the arguments put up against it have been rotten ones, which underline how little we understand religion.

People often contrast racial prejudice with religious hatred. They claim, for example, that it is wrong to mock particular races, because we are born into them, whereas religions are freely chosen.

Now, this just isn't true. In other moods, or on other topics, the sort of atheist who wants to keep the right to be beastly about religion would argue vigorously against both the idea that race is something we are born into and the idea that religion is something freely chosen by adults.

On the contrary, Richard Dawkins has pointed out again and again that religion is largely something we inherit from our parents. He wants to abolish the idea of 'Muslim babies' or 'Christian babies' on the grounds that they are innocent of theology. In a similar way, the left is generally keen on the social construction of race, pointing out quite rightly that racial identity, in so far as it is socially important, is determined by society, and to some extent by individual decisions.

In this instance, Dawkins is completely right, and quite beside the point. Children don't choose their religions after a due and careful consideration of the available cosmologies and ethical systems. They believe more or less what they are told, and follow the values of the society around them. But this state continues into adulthood. Anyone who has spent time around believers knows that belief is a tiny fraction of what binds them together and that the private beliefs of churchgoers are often wildly at variance with their public statements, however sincerely they are made.

This terminological inexactitude cuts both ways. Atheists - and newspapers - pick up naturally on all the ways in which Christians behave much more badly than their beliefs would appear to mandate. But there are also numerous examples of their behaving better. In 15 years of writing about religion, on and off, I have found it an infallible rule that the hardliners and exclusionists have logic on their side, and generally scripture too.

All major religious traditions contradict themselves. And why not? They contain multitudes - but the more consistent, and the more clearly worked-out they become, the nastier the results are likely to be. The clearest example at the moment is the Roman Catholic doctrine against contraception which starts off from an attempt to bring philosophical consistency and order to the problem and ends up condemning hundreds of thousands of women to die in agony and leave orphans behind them. Hypocrisy and human weakness do much better.

If consistency of belief is neither necessary nor - often - desirable among believers, what becomes of the argument that religious beliefs are legitimate targets for hatred, since they are freely chosen by people who must bear the consequences in a free society?

There are some doctrines which should not be held without expressing the holder to the contempt of all decent people. The proper response to a holocaust denier is not just to refute their facts, but to regard their personality as diseased. I think the same applies to those people who defend or advocate the use of judicial torture, though I appreciate this is a less popular viewpoint. Yet what makes these doctrines contemptible is not their factual error, but their moral implications. Is it fair to regard religious allegiances in the same light?

It has certainly been traditional. The strict Protestant doctrine, nowadays unpopular outside Northern Ireland, is that theological error is immoral and deserves eternal torment. Anyone who believes in transsubstantiation has made himself less than human, and may be treated as such. In practice it is impossible, politically, to attack ideas without attacking the people who hold them. It's difficult enough to do so even in private life. The separation can't be made cleanly. It's disingenuous for the enemies of any particular religion to pretend that they wish to damage belief without wounding believers.

Wounding believers may be a perfectly reasonable price to pay for other benefits. In free societies, offence gets caused. That's why this law is a bad idea in principle. But, so, in principle, are any laws restricting freedom of speech, including the race relations act. What can't be done is to draw a hard and simple line between incitement to racial and religious hatred. The large-scale expression of theological differences is always an expression of intercommunal hatred, as much as stresses on racial differences are. Which is the greater threat will depend on how any society understands its own differences.

There are rare circumstances in which it is perfectly reasonable for a society to ban incitement to religions hatred, as they are banned in Northern Ireland. It's not ideal, but it can be better than the alternatives, and it can have considerable symbolic worth in asserting to some vilified minority that they are as valuable as the rest of society. But this should only happen when the consequences of inaction are clearly worse. Here, now, they are not.

* Andrew Brown maintains a weblog, the Helmintholog.