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Incitement to Religious Hatred

Contents

Introduction

I should first apologize to my reader for the unfortunate topic of this essay, and the unedifying treatment which it requires. Left to myself, I would never address this subject, as being full of folly and lies. I only do so because it has become a topic of political significance in the UK in 2004/5 AD. I shall postpone clearly expressing my own views until the end of this document.

Legislative Proposal

The proposed law, as I understand it, purports to make it an offence for a person to make any remark regarding some religious conviction, belief or practice which - intentionally or not - offends someone else, who then claims that it would tend to cause others to hate them because of their religious affiliation.

I shall limit myself to address a more restricted law and attempt to show that even this is harmful both to society and to individuals and so is unjust. This law is:

A due penalty will be imposed on any agent convicted of
explicitly inviting, encouraging, advising or directing an audience of one or more people
to hate, detest, resent, or account as sub-human any target person or group of persons
identified by any belief, conviction or practice
that both the agent and the target can be shown to have represented as being "religious" in character.
It would always be possible for anyone accused of infringing this law to claim that they did not accept that the group they targeting was characterized by a religion. So, unlike the proposed statute, this law would exclude the conviction of someone who incited the hatred of Bahi's but who never claimed or admitted that this was a religion. Similarly, someone who incited the hatred of abortionists would not be covered by this law, as - to my knowledge - no abortionist or group of abortionists has ever suggested that their ethic and practice either amounts to a religion or are any more characteristic of a religion than any other aspects of their lives. Even such a weak law, I shall argue, is harmful both to society and individuals and so unjust.

Textual Analysis

The first step is to look at the three headline words and to consider both their substantive meaning and their emotive significance.

Incitement

This means encouragement, but with connotations of annoyance. So I am incited to speak abruptly to someone if they abuse me. On the whole, one is only incited to do intemperate things: by being irritated beyond the point at which one can maintain one's equanimity.

Obviously it is good to incite someone to virtue. Obviously, it is bad to encourage and support someone in vice.

I contend that the word "incitement" is used to describe the proposed statute in order to insinuate that "Incitement to Religious Hatred" is wrong because (minor premise) it is a form of incitement, and (major premise) all incitement is wrong.

Religious

This is a very difficult word. In a secular state, any-one can claim (and on what basis could their claim be refuted?) that any practice or belief or conviction is religious. If necessary, they can found their own personal religion in order to bolster this assertion. Unless Officers of the State are going to get involved in the question of the "truth of religion", this gambit cannot be countered. In practice, what is liable to happen is that some list of "State approved religions" will be drawn up, either formally or informally. I do not wish to consider the possible ramifications of such an illiberal policy in detail, but I fear that large, politically influential, groupings will have little trouble getting registered while small, politically insignificant groupings will find it impossible.

I contend that the reason that the word "religious" is used in the description of the new statute is two-fold.

  1. It is used to pander to a substantial number of people who do identify with each other on the basis of common beliefs, sentiments, attitudes, convictions, ideology and practices, simultaneously asserting that this mutual identification and its characteristic forms are "religious" in nature. These people believe - rightly or wrongly - that the proposed laaw will protect them from annoyance, irritation and offence.
  2. It is used to limit the extent of the law. To outlaw "incitement to hatred" in general would make it illegal to "incite the hatred of": politicians, homosexuals, estate agents, members of the BNP and people with ginger hair. At the moment, none of these groups have any such protection in law.

Hatred

Hatred is always wrong, though sometimes understandable. Even "hatred of evil" or "of sin" is doubtful, because of what much past experience tells us it is liable to become. Few people are able to keep a hatred of perceived sin or crime from spilling over into a disvaluing of those perceived to be guilty of sin or crime. It should not need to be said that "implacable opposition to and total intolerance of evil" is not only fine, but absolutely required of any just person.

I propose that the word "hatred" is used in the description of the new statute because, as I have already said, hatred is always wrong. Hence incitement to religious hatred must always be wrong.

Philosophical Analysis

If "incitement to hatred is always wrong", then how can a qualification by the word "religion" be justified? The present law is itself unjustifiable, as it makes a special case of "racial" hatred. Indeed, a large part of the motivation behind this statute is to extend the protection granted to supposed racial groups: such as the Sikhs, Hindus, Parsees and Jews; to other groups who no-one supposes to be racially defined: such as Catholics and Muslims.

Hatred of a person on the ground of his/her religion is no different from hatred of them for any other reason. Hatred of any individual - even a thoroughly misguided, foolish, cruuel and vicious individual - is wrong. On the other hand, an intention to assassinate such an individual might - in a suitable context - be noble, wise and just: as a lessor of two evils. In which case, inciting others to commit violence against that individual might also be justifiable.

Actions, attitudes and intentions must be founded on objective values of justice if they are to be right. If not so founded, they are certainly wrong: at least in the sense of being arbitrary, irrational and incapable of being any more than "correct by accident".

Hatred of a religion per se, rather than its adherents; or of any political, bureaucratic, scientific, philosophical, sociological or economic system is simply childish. Of course, "implacable opposition to and total intolerance of" might be a different matter.

Political Analysis

It is counter-productive to trade personal insults with others regarding: It is particularly foolish to use insults based on innate characteristics, as the person being insulted has had little or no opportunity to determine or modify them. Even where they may not have been inevitable, the influences that gave rise to them were unidentifiable at the time, let alone controllable! In extreme cases, such behaviour is cruel and unjust and in many more cases it is injurious both to the state and to the individual being insulted. In fact, it is generally beneficial to affirm or tolerate diversity in society, but not on an indifferentist basis: that differences are unimportant; but in order to preserve a variety of perspectives and approaches against the day when they may be needed.

Sometimes, however, irony and satire are valuable in deflating pretentious individuals, institutions and orthodoxies that rely on irrational deference for the maintenance of their power. Our Lord was particularly good at wielding these weapons. While he didn't incite hatred of either the Saducees or the Pharisees, He did incite the common folk to disdain them.

The practical effects of a limited "incitement to religious hatred" law

The kind of law that I am considering would have the effect of discouraging people from passing critical comment on any practice, attitude or belief that they believed to be religious. Hence, it might dissuade people from condemning the practice of female genital mutilation, or the provisions of sharia law regarding women who become pregnant outside marriage, or the Hindu practice of widow immolation etc. Indeed, all infringements of natural justice committed in the name of religion would suddenly be protected from adverse comment. Rather than error having no rights, truth would have no rights whenever religion is invoked.

If some comment was passed by a subject about an object group fairly characterizing them as proponents of some religious attitude or proposition that (a) member(s) of the audience in fact found to be detestable, then the agent might be open to the charge of "inciting religious hatred" - for he had certainly elicited it in the member(s) the of the audience - even though he has no personal emotional involvement and did not expect or wish anyone else to develop hatred for the object group. If such a charge is excluded by the form of the law, then it will be difficult to rebut the defence that the remark made was were simply "fair comment" on the object group and the fact that they were revealed to be hateful by the commentary was their own fault: for being in fact detestable.

In summary,

In order to evade the intrinsic problems of such a law: namely that it will either have too wide an applicability or no applicability at all, I fear that the statute will give the Home Secretary the final decision as to whether a prosecution should proceed or not. Hence, the whole matter will be dictated by the whim of the Executive, in accordance with political expediency. If my prediction turns out correct, this statute will have an intimidatory role: rather similar to that of  "section 28", the legacy of which continues to stifle effective pastoral care of gay school children to this day.

No-one will be sure that anything they say in criticism of a religion or religious leader will escape the scope of the statute, so most people will chose to "play safe" and avoid prosecution by refraining from passing criticism. This is manifestly contrary to the interests of both the state and of vulnerable individuals: for irrational malign interests will be able to claim protection under the law and so evade exposure.

Indeed, much of my web-site could be characterized by Conservative Catholics as a self interested attack on the integrity of the Roman Catholic Church, calculated to produce a hatred of what is portrayed as a dictatorial, bigoted and oppressive leadership. I admit that many gay-folk do hate Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church because of its policy towards them and I cannot exclude the possibility that some persons reading what I have to say might come to hate either individual Catholics or Catholicism in general. Hence, I cannot in conscience fully defend myself against a charge that might be brought under the statute that I fear. The fact that I have no wish to elicit hatred of anyone or anything will not, I fear, serve me well.

If the truth be told, I do not fear prosecution under the statute: but only because I suspect that the Home Secretary would be disinclined to allow any such prosecution. This is not a protection that I relish.



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