Comment: Rod Liddle: Ha ha! You can’t insult Islam but I can
Here’s a short Christmas quiz. Let me rephrase that. It’s a short Winterval quiz. I would not wish to frighten or alienate any Sunday Times readers by waving Jesus Christ in their faces.
Anyway, the first question is this. One of the two statements below may soon be illegal; the other will still be within the law. You have to decide which is which and explain, with the aid of a diagram, the logic behind the new provision. a) Stoning women to death for adultery is barbaric. b) People who believe it is right to stone women to death for adultery are barbaric.
The answer is that a) should be fine and b) may land you in court charged with inciting religious hatred against Islam, under new provisions in David Blunkett’s Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. He’s been a busy bee of late, hasn’t he. One wishes he had spent more time with Kimberly Quinn and less time behind his desk forcing ID cards and other profoundly illiberal legislation on the rest of us. Bear in mind, too, we already have legislation preventing incitement to violence.
The basis for the question above comes from a conversation I had with a diligent and helpful press officer at the Home Office. Blunkett’s plan to make the incitement of religious hatred a crime had been unveiled earlier in the week and provoked a furore.
The comedian Rowan Atkinson said this: “For telling a good and incisive joke (about religion), you should be praised. For telling a bad one, you should be ridiculed and reviled. The idea that you could be prosecuted for the telling of either is quite fantastic.”
Exactly — and Mr Blunkett was swift to respond. Apparently, comedians were to be exempt from the law. So, if I sail a little close to the wind in this article, please assume that I’m wearing a red nose. That should put the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) off the scent. Mr Blunkett further added that the provision was intended to protect “individuals” not “ideology”.
However, this does not accord with the bill itself, which would seem to prohibit people from treating the Bible or the Koran “in an abusive or insulting way”. The bill, then, does appear to protect ideology and Mr Blunkett either has no clear idea what it is meant to achieve, other than swing a few votes, or he’s being extremely disingenuous.
Further, the Home Office clearly doesn’t have the slightest clue what would constitute an offence under the new provisions. That Home Office spokesperson told me it “wasn’t about criminalising people making justifiable comments about religion”.
Justifiable? Define, please.
“Well, I can’t say, really . . . you’ve put me in a difficult position. But it’s not about defending religion, per se.”
So what is it about? What would constitute an offence? If I said Islam was stupid, like the French writer Michel Houellebecq, would I be in court? “Definitely not.”
But if I said people who believed in something that was stupid were themselves therefore stupid, would that land me in the dock? “Um. Not sure. Possibly. I just don’t know at this stage. It has to go to the attorney-general first. I suppose, if it were likely to incite people to hate Muslims.” Then the press officer said this. “There are no definitive answers.”
That strikes me as a problem, because the police and the CPS and the judiciary, when they’re attempting to bring a prosecution or trying a case, have a penchant for definitive answers.
Later the press officer rang back. “It’s all about context,” she said. “If you wrote something in your column about Islam the CPS might not be interested, but if the same thing was said by Nick Griffin (the British National party leader) in a pub in Bradford, they might well be.”
So I’m exempt too. Mr Blunkett, or his office, has bestowed upon me an honorary red nose, for which many thanks. But Nick Griffin isn’t exempt. Doesn’t that strike you as a tad unfair, a shade undemocratic? Can you imagine the court case against him? And his defence? Would it be okay if he’d said it in a pub in Droitwich, or Diss? I quite like the idea of person-specific crimes, mind. Perhaps we could devise an offence for which only, say, Robert Kilroy-Silk or Ainsley Harriott were prosecutable.
