Yesterday the Home Affairs Select Committee announced that relations between British Muslims and the wider community have ‘deteriorated’ since the September 11th, 2001 terror atrocities in the US and the resultant war on terrorism. MPs found many of Britain's 1.8 million Muslims felt persecuted under controversial anti-terrorism laws and expressed fears over the perceived rise in institutionalised Islamophobia evidenced in the increase in the number of police security checks.
The report read: ‘Muslims in Britain are more likely than other groups to feel they are suffering as a result of the response to international terrorism. We do not believe the Asian community is being unreasonably targeted by stops and searches but accept that Muslims perceive they are being stigmatised by the legislation’. Labour MP and committee chairman John Denham called on the government to sustain better community cohesion to ensure the Muslim community was fully involved in developing ‘the next steps in tackling terrorism’.
In an article in Muslim Weekly last year, senior Labour energy minister Mike O'Brien accepted that many British Muslims were ‘understandably ... very angry about the war’. But, as if in exchange, he listed reasons why a Labour government and Blair had been good for Muslims, including its drive ‘to toughen the laws on incitement to religious hatred.’ And there’s the rub. The cynical approach of this government could hardly be more clearly evidenced than by forcing the prevention of terrorism law through parliament and then trying to mollify (read: get votes from) those targeted with a different law. The incitement to religious hatred bill is a sop with wide-ranging implications for freedom of speech.
So it was bad news for the government and good news for the rest of society that among a number of other high profile pre-election casualties, the bill has been dropped. The dangers and deficiencies of the bill have already been rehearsed elsewhere on this site – see the Civitas Blogs and the Background Briefing – but the fundamental point is that it was badly drafted and a bad idea. Its loose wording risked jeopardizing free speech, and as Ken MacDonald, Director of Public Prosecutions said, criminalizing a state of mind; there was no definition of the key terms, such as ‘insult’ and ‘hatred’; and there was no defence of truthfulness.
The law would have fomented suspicion, hostility and resentment rather than promoted tolerance. It would have provided maximum protection for the most litigious people in society and encouraged religious extremism by shielding religious leaders from legitimate criticism. Icqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain made clear that it would have illegalised criticism of the Prophet Muhammad and that offenders would have been prosecuted. Since the Christian blasphemy law is nominal and ineffective, there is no protection currently offered to religious groups in Britain that is not also available to Muslims by being covered under existing criminal and racial laws.
The fact is that punitive laws are not the way to deal with poor cohesion in society or to foster better community relations. For now the government’s strategy of giving with one hand and taking away with another has been stymied. But if Labour comes back after the election, so will the bill.