Facing Down

The reactions to David Blunkett's proposals for a law against inciting religious hate seem to have aroused negative reactions on both sides of the political divide. On the one hand, Melanie Phillips sees the proposed new law as something "that will almost certainly criminalize any criticism of Islam, Muslims or any other religion":

Blunkett claims that the new law would not do this but would merely prevent incitement to religious hatred, like the law against incitement to racial hatred. But there is a big difference between the two.

Racial hatred, after all, is directed against people who have no option but to be what they are. Racial hatred is therefore an attack upon people as people, clear and unambiguous. Religion, by contrast, is a principal site of impassioned argument and disputation. What it stands for is intrinsically controversial and lends itself almost by definition to giving offence to others. The scope for claims that perfectly legitimate criticism of religious doctrines or representatives of a faith are unlawful would be immense and would almost certainly criminalize certain points of view.

Of course innocent British Muslims should be protected from attack. But there are already laws to prevent physical attacks on them, as on anyone else. And the religious hatred law is unlikely to prevent actual conduct that threatens them. It will instead criminalize the wrong kind of opinion.

Specifically, it is designed as a sop to those in the Muslim community who have been conducting a relentless campaign against anyone who even so much as mentions the word ‘Islamic’ in connection with extremism or terror by vilifying them as ‘Islamophobic’. And I should know, since I am regularly targeted — along with getting on for just about every journalist who has ever written about the jihad against the west or about the troubled business of Muslim integration — for precisely this kind of crude attempt at intimidation.

On the other hand, we have Lord Desai, whose criticisms of the new law stem from rather different reservations (I quote from the BBC report already linked to):

But Labour peer Lord Desai believes there is no need for the proposed measures.

He told Today: "We will get into a real muddle if we take religion as a ground for prosecution, rather than ethnic stereotyping.

"When people insult Muslims they are not attacking the religion, they are attacking Muslims as a racial group. The protection required is already covered in law."

Lord Desai suggested Mr Blunkett would have a "very tough time" getting the proposed measures through the House of Lords.


Personally, I can't see that the law proposed by Blunkett would be all that dangerous or difficult to implement. And, as he says, it would fill a dangerous gap:

"The gap is where you don't have ethnicity as the target of hate, you don't have the nationality as the target of hate, you have the religion," he told Today. "While Jews and Sikhs are covered under the existing law, those of Islamic faith and Christians are not."

Mr Blunkett said that the key was being "robust enough in applying it but sensitive enough not to make a monkey out of it. The issue of incitement to religious hate is a tiny part of a much broader pattern that we are attempting, collectively, to put together to create a society where cohesion, tolerance and understanding are natural, where people can settle their differences in ways that don't develop hate and where people feel free to be able to express sensible views and have sensible arguments."

Such legislation would certainly help to incriminate fanatics of the Abu Hamza type, though it would presumably depend for its effectiveness on a will to use and implement the law. Many wonder whether the present government really possesses such a will - the invitation by the supposedly "moderate" Muslim Council of Britain of the extremist Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi , who is accused of making rabidly anti-Semitic remarks and of supporting suicide bombers, to take part in several events in London next week raises serious questions about government policy in this area -- and it doesn't bode well for the future of the "religious hate" law.

However, I still think that in separating religious hatred from racial hatred, Blunkett is going in the right direction. This cannot be said of figures such as Dr Richard Stone, who seek to draw a line of equation between "Islamophobia" and racism. That path must surely lead to an increase of support for the racists in our society, and is a very dangerous one indeed.

Blunkett has said that the extremists mist be "faced down", "to promote a positive and inclusive sense of British identity." And in an article in today's Guardian newspaper, chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown argues that

It is because different ethnic groups came to live together in one small island that we first made a virtue of tolerance, welcoming and included successive waves of settlers - from Saxons and Normans to Huguenots and Jews and Asians and African-Caribbeans - and recognizing plural identities.

And I would suggest that out of that toleration came a belief in religious and political freedom - illustrated best by Adam Nicolson's story of the creation of the King James Bible: different denominations coming together in committee to create a symbol of unity for the whole nation.

Liberty meant not just tolerance for minorities but a deeply rooted belief - illustrated early in our history by trial by jury - in the freedom of the individual under the law and in the liberty of the common people rooted in constantly evolving English common law.

History is strewn with examples of how we failed to live up to our ideals. But the idea of liberty did mean, in practice, that for half a century it was Britain that led the worldwide anti-slavery movement.

.............


Britishness has also meant a tradition of fair play. We may think today of British fair play as something applied on the sports field, but in fact most of the time it has been a very widely accepted foundation of social order: treating people fairly, rewarding hard work, encouraging self improvement through education and being inclusive.

And this commitment to fair play has animated British political thought on both left and right over the centuries, right through to the passion for social improvement of the Victorian middle classes and the Christian socialists and trade unions who struggled for a new welfare settlement in the 20th century.

The two ideologies that have characterized the histories of other countries have never taken root here. On the one hand an ideology of state power, which choked individual freedom and made the individual a slave to some arbitrarily defined collective interest, has found little or no favour in Britain. On the other hand, an ideology of crude individualism, which leaves the individual isolated, stranded, on his own, detached from society around him, has no resonance for a Britain that has a strong sense of fair play and an even stronger sense of duty and a rich tradition of voluntary organizations, local democracy and civic life.


Wishful thinking? Or not.