Protecting Civil Liberties Laws On Incitement Must Strike Right Balance
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Summary
News stories often have a strange habit of turning up in pairs. Take yesterday. Along comes Home Secretary David Blunkett to relaunch the attempt to make inciting religious hatred a criminal offence in England and Wales. No sooner has he sat down than up pops Dr al-Qaradawi, a radical Muslim cleric said to have sought the destruction of Israel and encouraged women and children to become suicide bombers.
For Mr Blunkett the reform would even things up. At present Sikh and Jewish people are covered under the 1986 Public Order Act which outlaws incitement to racial hatred. However, because they are not deemed to be racial groupings, Christians and Muslims are not covered by it. The government first tried to bring in the offence of inciting religious hatred in 2001 among emergency measures after 9/ 11 because it feared a wave of Islamophobia. However, it was dropped in the face of strong opposition from the House of Lords. Opponents believed it would be unworkable and would impinge on civil liberties. There were suggestions that it could threaten artistic work. Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and Monty Python's Life of Brian could both fall foul, it was said.See the full content of this document
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Protecting Civil Liberties Laws On Incitement Must Strike Right Balance
Those fears remain. Mr Blunkett insists that the legislation will protect minority religions...
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