A proposed British law seeks to make criminals of anyone who criticizes another person's religion. I wrote about it here and here. To see where this awful initiative will lead, just take a look at our friends Down Under. Victoria, an Australian province, adopted a similar law back in 2001. Despite premier Steve Bracks' pronouncements about the sanctity of free speech, judges in Victoria are now indeed telling people to shut it. This account lays it out rather well. Key quote:
>> Pastor Daniel Scot and Pastor Danny Nalliah were last week found to have committed religious vilification after the first trial under this new law. Judge Michael Higgins found Scot offended by quoting the Koran in a way that got "a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter".
Yes, Scot [during a seminar on Islamic Jihad] made his audience of 250 Christians laugh at Islam. He didn't inspire them to burn a mosque, shout insults at Muslims, plant bombs or paint nasty slogans on fences. He just made the audience laugh. And that in Victoria is now a crime. <<
Writer Andrew Bolt makes an excellent point when he says that the mere existence of the law against religious insults encourages believers to feel offended. Three or four years ago, the Muslims who brought the charges against Nalliah and Scot probably wouldn't have bothered to go to a Christian seminar on Jihad in the first place. And if they had, and had found it offensive, they could have fought back with a seminar of their own, or vigorous letters to the newspapers, or a rowdy protest march, or a range of other means available to citizens of a healthy democracy. Those options were still open to them this year. Instead, with the full backing of the state, they chose to take legal action, thanks to a law that rewards the overly pious and the impossibly thin-skinned.
This all takes place in a country where Sheik Mohammed Omran, the head of Australia's Islamic Information and Support Center, told SBS TV last year that jihad was appropriate, but only outside Australia. You have to wonder how that statement was received by the friends and relatives of the 88 Australians blown to bloody smithereens in the Bali bomb attack two years ago. And you have to wonder how other peace-loving Australians feel when 'their' Mufti, Sheik Taj El-Din El-Hilali, another Muslim firebrand, is free to praise the heroes of Hezbollah, and to celebrate 9/11 as a milestone in Allah's divine plan for the world, and to thunder that
>> ...there is a war of infidels taking place that requires real men and strong positions that prove our manhood towards God. <<
To date, neither man has been hauled into court.
In another five or ten years, the Brits who are allowing the same prohibition on religious insults to become law in their own country won't be able to claim ignorance. The writing was on the wall as far away as Australia, and as close-by as Birmingham.
In any case, we're clearly far down the rabbit hole when laws shield people's feelings from being hurt, but apparently fail to keep religious zealots from threatening to hurt actual people.
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