The case that goes to the heart of hate laws
WHEN SALMAN Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988, depicting the Prophet irreverently, Islamists sentenced him to death and demanded a blasphemy law.
They didn’t get one because, as Rushdie observed, a “religion whose leaders behaved in this way could probably use a little criticism”.
Fast forward to post-9/11, with the spotlight firmly back on Muslims. Jews and Sikhs already had protection from incitement to racial hatred because the law defines them as races, each a single ethnic block.
Not so for Muslims who, like Christians, are a faith group of multiple ethnicity. In law, this has left Muslims with less legal protection from insults and abuse than Jews.
The Blair government sought to remedy this by outlawing hatred being whipped up against people because of their faith — not just because of their race. The result was the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act, but for Islamists it is not enough. They want the same legal protection from insult and abuse as race groups and they often cite two cases in support of their campaign.
In 2010, BNP activist Anthony Bamber distributed a leaflet with the ludicrous assertion that Muslims were almost entirely responsible for the heroin trade. Bamber was not prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred because in law Muslims are not a race.
He was prosecuted for inciting religious hatred but was acquitted.
This was because the law in respect of religious hatred requires evidence of “threatening words or behaviour”, not simply “abusive or insulting” behaviour. There also has to be evidence of an intention to stir up religious hatred. There was insufficient evidence on both counts.
Had the hateful Bamber’s invective been directed at Jews, however, a prosecution for incitement to racial hatred might have prevailed because the evidential threshold is lower than for religious hatred. Abusive and insulting acts — which Bamber’s comments manifestly were — are relevant provided they are deemed likely to stir up antisemitism.
In 2013, the CPS decided not to prosecute UKIP councillor Eric Kitson for incitement to religious hatred, even though he posted an outrageous cartoon on his Facebook page of a “Muslim being spit roasted on a fire fuelled by copies of the Koran”. He also wrote that “all” Muslim women should be hanged “first then ask questions later.”
Abusive and insulting though Kitson was to Muslims, there was neither sufficient evidence that he had used threats to stir up religious hatred, nor that this was his intention. Had Kitson’s imagery being directed at Jews he may well have been prosecuted — provided stirring up antisemitism was thought likely.
Islamists now want the evidential threshold for incitement to religious hatred lowered to include “insults and abuse”, thereby affording Muslims — a faith group — the same protection as Jews and other racial groups.
In fact, prosecutions under the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act are rare and the Bamber and Kitson anomalies, rarer still. In practice, most abusive and insulting behaviour against Muslims can be caught by the Public Order Act or by tougher sentences if a crime is found to have been aggravated by religious hatred.
This is why opponents of treating Muslims in law as if they are a race like Jews argue that the principle of freedom of speech which underpins the 2006 Act transcends the few anomalies it throws up. For them, the right to insult and sometimes even abuse someone’s faith — provided this is not accompanied by threats — is inviolate since, unlike race, faith is a matter of personal belief.
Moreover, the Act has also spared Muslims from prosecution for saying the most hateful and abusive things about Jews.
The most recent beneficiary of this is Nazim Ali, who led the proHezbollah Al Quds march last June through London’s West
End. Last week the CPS said
Ali had no case to answer — despite pure poison having poured from the pharmacist’s lips amidst Hezbollah flags emblazoned with AK 47s.
“Zionists”, he screamed, are “responsible for the murder of the people in those towers in Grenfell, the Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.”
He even seemed to suggest that these unnamed Zionists actually wanted Grenfell’s Muslim inhabitants burned alive. “It is the Zionists who give the money to the Tory party to kill people in high rise blocks.” When the EDL appeared, Ali bellowed:
“The EDL is a right-wing fascist organisation, just like the Zionists, so it’s a natural marriage in heaven, or rather hell. That’s where they’re going to end up one day, they’re natural part-
Bamber was acquitted of inciting religious hatred’ The most recent beneficiary is Nazim Ali’