Author: Ophelia Benson

It’s back, as the saying goes. The incitement to religious hatred law.

The bill extends the offence of incitement to racial hatred, under the Public Order Act 1988, to religious hatred, so that multi-ethnic faith groups are covered, as Sikhs and Jews are at the moment. Sadiq Khan, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said the bill closed a loophole which meant those who incite hatred against Christians and Muslims could not be prosecuted. “The law will not mean that comedians like Rowan Atkinson cannot take the piss out of religion,” he added.

Well why not? How do you know? How do I know? How do comedians like Rowan Atkinson, and bloggers like OB and journalists like Christopher Hitchens and science popularisers like Richard Dawkins and philosophy popularisers like A C Grayling and secularism popularisers like Ibn Warraq and Maryam Namazie and Azam Kamguian – how do any of us know? We don’t. That’s just it. We don’t know at all, and some spokesman just saying so doesn’t help. Sadiq Khan doesn’t know what sort of prosecutions would be brought under such a law, does he. How could he know? So where does he get the calm assurance of that assertion? Who knows.

And that word ‘loophole’ is deceptive, too. Loophole shmoophole. One might as well say a new law against incitement to political hatred ‘closes a loophole’ which means that those who incite hatred against socialists and libertarians cannot be prosecuted. It’s not a ‘loophole,’ it’s the essence of the thing. Just as it’s not a ‘technicality’ to say that the police can’t extort confessions by torture, so it’s not a ‘loophole’ to say that ideas must not be protected from criticism by threats of prosecution and imprisonment. In fact this new law would not so much close a loophole as create an absurdity, as Rowan Atkinson points out:

And a law that attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas, as long as they are not religious ideas, is a very peculiar law indeed.

There is nothing very reassuring in the explanatory notes that accompany the bill:

Explanatory notes accompanying the Bill say the offence would apply ”to the use of words or behaviour or display of written material, publishing or distributing written material, the public performance of a play, distributing, showing or playing a recording, broadcasting or including a programme in a programme service and the possession of written materials or recordings with a view to display, publication, distribution or inclusion in a programme service”. They add: ”For each offence the words, behaviour, written material, recordings or programmes must be threatening, abusive or insulting and intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.”

Must be threatening, abusive or insulting. Oh well that’s all right then! Because it’s well-known how calm and equable religious believers always are when non-believers challenge their beliefs. Believers will never see an ‘insult’ where other observers might see simply a difference of opinion. Oh hell no. And all those corpses littering the landscape, all those death threats, all those politicians under police protection, all those novelists and journalists who have gone into hiding – that’s just – um – a misunderstanding, which will never happen once this splendid law is in place and nobody is allowed to insult religion any more. Excellent.

For those of you who can get Ontario TV – Homa Arjomand of the campaign against Sharia courts in Canada is going to be on the interview show Person2Person today at 8:30 p.m. (20:30) Ontario time. The show repeats at midnight, then again tomorrow Wednesday at 3 p.m. (15:00).

I’ve been thinking about one particular idea in the argument over that recurring (or ‘really tedious’) subject of the conflation of race and religion and how that conflation works to head off and prevent criticism. This idea:

whilst attacks on religions can be merely the stuff of enlightenment rationalism, they can also be the cover for nasty attempts to marginalise whole groups of people.

Well, yes, they can be, but then ‘attacks on’ or criticisms of pretty much anything can be that. Including, for example, attacks on atheism and secularism. I would in fact say that there is a concerted effort under way in the US right now to do just exactly that – to criticise or attack atheism and secularism in an attempt to marginalise atheists and secularists. And I would also say that it’s having considerable success.

In fact, surely one could argue that that’s one of the things religions have historically been most concerned to do: to marginalise people who don’t buy what they’re selling. Some religions and a lot of religious people have over time become much less keen to do that, but it’s obvious enough that in some parts of the world (including the US) that trend has been halted and turned around. That’s not a big secret, is it? Isn’t it pretty familar stuff, that that’s what religions do? Create ingroups and outgroups, Us and Them, Our Team and Other? The outgroup may be atheists, but it may just as well be other religions. (No! Really?) Sunnis and Shi’ites, Protestants and Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Catholic and Muslim, Hindu and Muslim – and on and on. They don’t always just calmly agree to differ and go their separate ways, do they. It would be nice if they did but they don’t. So where is the force in making some special claim that attacks on/criticism of religion or religions are peculiar that way?Surely that idea is in fact part of what inspired and motivated ‘enlightenment rationalism.’ Isn’t it? Enlightement rationalism isn’t just some whim, a hobby, something to do of an evening, a ‘lifestyle’ choice. There are compelling reasons for preferring rational thought to the certainties of faith, and the marginalisation of ‘whole groups of people’ is emphatically one of them.

And then, religions also marginalise whole groups of people internally, within the religion. That’s one thing religions are: codified systems for marginalising and subordinating large groups of people. For instance, half of the people in question: all the women and girls.

Which is not to deny the point. Yes, criticising religion does run the risk of diminishing the general respect for followers of that religion. But then, again, that’s true of any system of ideas. But the problem is more obvious in the case of Islam, because Muslims are the targets of hatred now, they are being marginalised. True. And therefore criticism should be carefully stated. But it shouldn’t be discouraged or, well, marginalised.