“Blasphemy laws are incompatible with free speech”, writes Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
The Government is known to disapprove of the term “two-tier”, especially when applied to policing, in which case, says a recent Home Office report, it can be a telltale sign that you’re of the “far-Right”. Isn’t everything?
I shouldn’t have laughed at that, but I did.
Yet in the last few days we’ve had a perfect example of how our laws are written to be, and correctly interpreted by judges as, two-tier, meaning that they are laws intended to offer different levels of protection and punishment to different groups of UK residents, depending on their faith or ethnic origin.
Martin Frost of Manchester chose (ill-advisedly, I might add) to burn a copy of the Koran in public, live streaming the event, in response to his daughter’s death at the hands of Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023.
It is notable how many media outlets skated over the fact that Hamas murdered Martin Frost’s daughter. You might think the Telegraph’s phrasing (“her death at the hands of Hamas terrorists”) was mealy-mouthed enough, but just compare it to this ITV report that said,
The “trigger” for his actions was the death of his daughter in the Israeli conflict which had affected his mental health, the court heard.
Note the scare quotes around the word “trigger”, the words “the death of” as if she died a natural or accidental death, and the reference to it occurring in “the Israeli conflict”. Not the Hamas conflict, not the Gaza conflict, not even the Israel-Palestine conflict, but the Israeli conflict.
Tom Harris’s article continues,
He [Martin Frost] claimed also to have been protesting at the murder of Iraqi asylum seeker Salwan Momika who was murdered in his apartment in Stockholm after he performed his own act of Koran burning for his internet audience.
Forst [sic] pleaded guilty to charge of “racially or religiously aggravated intentional harassment or alarm by displaying some writing, sign or other visible representation which was threatening, abusive or insulting thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.” That charge is contained in the text of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, introduced by Tony Blair’s government.
The old blasphemy laws may have been consigned to history decades ago, but they were replaced in 1998 by new ones: it is widely accepted that Muslims take very seriously the physical abuse of their religion’s holy book and are known to feel personally offended by any disrespect shown towards it. Similarly, most Muslims also take personal offence at any physical representation of the prophet Mohammed, hence the outcry against the teacher at Batley Grammar in 2021 who did exactly that by showing his pupils a cartoon depicting Islam’s founder.
That teacher is still in hiding.
In modern Britain, Islam and the Koran are protected by the law, by the courts and by the police. Christianity is not. That is not an argument that Christianity should receive equal protection; it is an argument that Islam should receive the same level of legal respect and protection as Christianity – ie, none. Two-tier protection is unacceptable because it equates to two-tier freedom of expression, freedom to criticise one religion but not a different one.
Yes. To forestall criticism that just saying “Yes” adds little of value, I shall try to give better value by amending it to “YES, YES, YES!!!”
We can imagine the horror that police officers, court officials and politicians must have felt when legal proceedings didn’t go their way in the case of Jamie Michael, an ex-Royal Marine who had served his country in Iraq but whose anger at the Southport murders of three young girls last summer led him to upload an ill-advised rant against illegal immigrants that a member of staff working for a Labour MS (Member of the Senedd) felt so offended that they just had to report it to the police.
I would not have guessed that someone working for a Labour member of the Welsh Government actually did have something worse to do with their time than their day job.
A jury took less than an hour of deliberation to acquit him.
The terms Mr Michael used were obnoxious and unpleasant. But as the jury agreed, that should not impinge on his right to free speech.
Juries often do things like that, even now. That’s why “Progressives” keep whittling away at the jury system: “Former Justice Secretary calls for scrapping of defendants’ right to choose jury trial.”
You’re spot on…
The progressive politicians will stop at nothing to create their tools of population control. Thankfully a group of peers understood that freedom of speech means freedom of speech. The mealy-mouthed argument that some speech is harmful is really telling of how pussified these leftists are. “Words are literal violence” is such a bullshit argument I don’t even know where to start deconstructing it. Mentally they are children, having never evolved into adulthood.
Freedom of speech literally means you can say harmful things. If you restrict me from saying harmful things, I do not have free speech. Much like the 2nd Amendment is black and white to anyone who knows and speaks English: “Shall Not Be Infringed” means, it shall not, under any circumstances, conditions, color, or political desire, be infringed. YOU might think full-auto machine guns and 50-round magazines are perfectly reasonable, but banning any of them, for any reason, is an infringement. There is no other way to interpret it. “Reasonable infringement” is the same BS excuse that words are equivalent to physical violence, and can be repressed if yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. Only a child would agree to that logic.
A jury took less than an hour of deliberation to acquit him.
17 minutes, to be precise!
I don’t blame the Muslims. Their “faith” is repulsive (as was their “prophet” – who they believe to be the most perfect man who ever existed). Nah, they have played a blinder – including the race-card from the bottom of the deck. No, I blame our establishment who for reasons of self-loathing, twisted ideology and craven fear have made all of this happen. I wish them all Oldham cab-rides…
A jury acquittal in 17 minutes is, to all purposes, instantaneous.
They have to file out of the court room and go to the jury room. Of the 12 jurors one or two of them will want the loo. One or two might want a cigarette outside the building (That was still allowed when I did jury service 6 years ago.) By the time evryone is back, sat down with the door shut and a foreman chosen they’ve got time to go once round the table to collect the votes, and the votes must all have been Not Guilty staight away; there was no time for the ‘Not Guilty’ voices to try to persuade the ‘Guilty’ voices. Then they’ve got to send up to the court that they’ve reached a verdict. All that in 17 minutes.
This was a giant statement, an enormous statement, of Fuck Off by the jury to the prosecution.
There should be an investigation into this prosecution.
I say it was a political prosecution, an attempt to criminalise ANY discussion of illegal immigration.
Thank Heavens for the jury system, because how would this probably have been decided in a court without a jury?
The only thing which could have made that jury acquittal any sweeter would be for it to have taken place in the presence of Deputy District Judge Tanweer Ikram CBE.
Another tell-tale of an amoral position is when a writer describes something, like murder, in the “passive voice”. “The death of X” vs “killed by Y”.
Another example I recall a few years ago was about the former Northern Ireland and Manchester United football genius , George Best ( undeniably magnificent on the pitch). I remember people talking about his “suffering from alcoholism”, which takes out human agency.
In fact, I see this all the time now on all kinds of topics.
Yes a man in Iraq had his family murdered by Islamic forces, he went to Sweden (he was a real refugee – one of the few who are real) and is then murdered, again by Islamic forces, for burning a copy of the Koran – if he had burned a Christian Bible or a Jewish Torah he would NOT have been murdered.
A man in Britain, whose daughter was murdered by Islamic forces in the October 7th attacks in Israel, hears of the murder of the man in Sweden – and protests by himself burning a copy of the Koran.
A British judge (educated and trained in the United Kingdom) responds to this by punishing the man for his protest – after first (and with no sense of irony – and with zero self awareness) giving him a lecture on what a “tolerant” country Britain is.
There is no need for a long discussion – it is obvious that Freedom of Speech and the right to protest (even protest against the murder of one’s own child) is dead in the West, with the possible exception of the United States. Modern laws in the United Kingdom, and the judges and other officials who enforce the laws, follow principles that are in direct contradiction with traditional Western principles.
And even in the United States – if the left regain the Presidency in 2029 their first order of business will be to appoint Supreme Court justices (perhaps by enlarging the court – perhaps by waiting for existing justices to retire) who will exterminate the 1st Amendment (Freedom of Speech) and the rest of the Bill of Rights.
In the Jewish scriptures, called the Old Testament by Christians, Abraham does indeed leave the pagan city of Ur – but he expresses no hatred of people who do not follow the religion he has chosen to follow.
Look up (look up for yourself) what the Koran claims that “Ibrahim” said – how he will hate, forever, all those who do not follow Allah. Now it could be that the Classical Arabic has a different meaning – but the English translations I have seen are deeply disturbing.
As for Jesus – the Islamic scriptures do indeed talk about him, but the account of his teachings that it gives is not compatible with the New Testament, the principles are not just different, they are opposed.
However, I may be mistaken, I am certainly NOT a great theologian, – look up for yourself what the Islamic scriptures say about the teachings of Jesus, what Jesus want to do (for example in relation the the infidel tax – and the other two options of conversion to Islam or death, and his general policy towards the killing of all “pigs”) and compare it to the account the Christian scriptures give of the teachings of Jesus.
It is always best to look things up for yourself in the scriptures of the various religions and make up your own mind.
The laws and new methods of choosing judges introduced by Prime Minister Blair were indeed appalling – that becomes more obvious by the day.
Jury members can feel threatened, for example, by the fear that they will be persecuted (lose their jobs and so on) if they are seen as “racist” or “Islamophobic” – but at least trial by jury is something.
But as Natalie informs us, people connected with the government wish to get rid of the right of Trial by Jury, using he incompetence of the legal system (the delays) as an excuse.
No Double Jeopardy (no being tried twice for the same offence) and the Right to Silence when being asked questions by the authorities, have already de facto gone in British law.
Hobbes, Hume and Bentham rule – no rights against the state.