From the Telegraph: 'Koran burning': men expect to be charged with inciting racial hatred From the BBC: Men arrested in Gateshead over suspected Koran burning. From the Guardian... nothing that I can see right now (9.45 am). This absence is being remarked upon in the comments sections of unrelated Guardian stories. Correction - upon searching I see the Guardian did have a story yesterday. The remarks I mentioned are on the absence of comment or commentable pieces dealing with this story in today's paper. Quite right too. This is a big story for two reasons. Firstly, who would have thought it? After all that buildup, Pastor Terry Jones, the ticks-every-stereotype gun-toting American pastor, did not burn any Korans. Instead the deed was done in the car park of a Gateshead pub. The second big aspect of this story is explained in this line from theGuardian story I did not see earlier: All usual caveats apply. I consider burning a religion's holy book to be a nasty deliberate insult. People should still be free to do it. They should also be free to video themselves doing it and distribute the video, whether or not it spreads religious or racial hatred. I am not in favour of the hatred. I am in favour of the freedom. Anyway, I sort-of knew that the video distribution was probably illegal upon grounds of spreading religious hatred. I did not know the burning itself was. Further update: Confusingly, there is now another Guardian story illustrated by exactly the same picture as the first one but directly contradicting it in what it says about the actual grounds for arrest: Quote: Last update, I promise: Yet another confusing aspect of this story is that according to the second Guardian story, the men have been charged with stirring up racial hatred under the 1986 Public Order Act, not religious hatred at all. Will the prosecution be able to make that - the racial angle - stick? Do they even want to? So far as I know, scarcely anyone has actually been prosecuted under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. One might have thought this would be an ideal opportunity for the authorities to try out the Act in the courts, if they were serious. Could it be that the racial hatred charge is intended to fail and is merely a piece of theatre to placate Muslims and protect our troops in Afghanistan? Yes, it is. The police have been fully transformed into our mutaween. I wonder if the police will also enforce any laws if, say, the complete works of Voltaire are burned, or if the Bible is burned, or if other books on religion, philosophy/insert subject of choice are burned, defaced, etc. Yeah, right. And people wonder why some of us, however respectful of property rights, take umbrage when a mosque is proposed to be built within spitting distance of Ground Zero. What race is Islam? I really cannot believe that the UK justice system is prosecuting people for burning a Koran. The mind boggles. Back door sharia indeed. If I were in a good position to withstand the potential legal fallout; which I'm not; I'd be inclined to burn a Bible on youtube just to see what reaction it would get from the authorities. On a general philosophical note, the problem we now have is that the law now no longer fits the Common Law principle of punishing acts(whether rightly or wrongly). Instead, under the influence of a century of marxism/post-marxism, post-modernism, the therapy and psychology movements etc, it now seeks out particular types of persons to punish and merely uses acts as a guide to sniff them out. So burning a Koran is proof that you are a type of person- a racist- and looking at pictures of a certain type is proof that you are a type of person- a podiphile- and saying nasty things about gays is proof that you are a type of person- a homophobe- and so on. The act itself is not being punished. It is your moral character itself which is under scrutiny. It's a fundamentally different paradigm to the one we are used to, in which certain acts are unacceptable and punished by the State. Instead, the paradigm is that of removing certain types of persons from society and the acts they perform are largely irrelevant other than as indicators of that inner nature. If it wasn't in Arabic then it wasn't a real Koran...no case to answer. People should be able to burn any books they like as long as they own them or have the permission of the owner. Instead of harrassing people when they choose to burn some of their own property why not punish those who act anti-socially because of it? A long time ago here I made the comment that any nation whose flag you cannot burn is not worth fighting for. I will say the same about religions and their books. So if a group of Atheists gets copies of the Great Books of all of the major religions and has a Northern Ireland style July 12th bonfire, then what would they be guilty of? Anti-anti-reformation hatred? It's disquieting, to say the least, that the conflation of religion and race goes unremarked in this post. The initial link quoted mentions "racial hatred", which later in the post becomes "religious or racial hatred" and finally "religious hatred". Surely the main point of objection to these arrests is that the "crime" of burning a religious text somehow falls under the banner of racialhatred. To my knowledge, Muslims are united not by the colour of their skin or their race (such as one may wish to define that word) but by their shared creed, their shared belief, as a consequence of which it seems an unavoidable conclusion that Islam has nothing to do with race whatsoever, and any attempt to define in racial terms any offence against Islam must be seen and exposed for the mendacity that it is, which is something I would routinely have expected from this blog. Ian B, There are plenty of Bible burning images on YouTube, but I'm not sure which, if any, are from the UK. Nergal, singer for the Polish black metal band Behemoth was recently prosecuted in Poland for destroying a Bible. But, then Poland is a much more institutionally religious country than the UK. So if a group of Atheists gets copies of the Great Books of all of the major religions and has a Northern Ireland style July 12th bonfire, then what would they be guilty of? Anti-anti-reformation hatred? I'm sure there's some sort of fire safety code they would be violating. You can't even burn dried leaves in your backyard any more. Yeah, it is bad to conflate those things, no doubt about it, but the actual issue here is freedom of expression. What would make this REALLY interesting would be if the youtube clip has been edited to omit the fact that the book actually being burnt was a Bible....Of course, the DICSUC will just change the tune, to charge the 'meta-offence' of 'intending to insult by pretending to burn a Koran'...Sorta like being charged with selling a narcotic when it is actually icing sugar. That is still a 'narcotics offence' in most places, notwithstanding that in any rational universe the most it would be is fraud. (I haven't seen the clip). [!ENTITY DICSUC "Dickhead In Charge, Situation Under Control"] Being as I am, an atheist, it needs to be pointed out that the Koran contains very specific instructions for believers to hunt down and kill me. If I had burned the book, I would think that someone accusing me of fostering hatred by burning a book that promotes both hatred and murder would have a tough time convincing a jury. The Bible also contains instructions to kill me but these are fortunately ambiguous enough for believers to pretend that it doesn't. "Racial hatred" would presumably be the wrong charge since the musselmen are at pains to claim they, rather like the borg, will assimilate anyone. I, too, have wondered about the genetic make'up of islam that causes it to be a "race" rather than a religion. On "homophobic" beloved of Peter Tatchell and his show-offy ilk ... I've pointed out before that a phobia is an irrational fear of. It is not a hatred of. Yet this gross illiteracy has been given currency by the MSM because they want to believe in "homophobia" because it is one more thread of society that they can pull out of the tapestry of our culture. Tatchell, you're wrong about the word you made up - "homophobia", and you're wrong in your ignorant assumption that France had something called "citizen's arrest". It doesn't. That's the US. In ome states. It is not included in the Code Napoleon ... and before you get too excited, the Code Napoleon isn't a poncy code by which French gays recognise each other. Johnathan: I do wonder. Muslims didn't create the inquisitorial nanny-state here, nor does it exist for their benefit. Its growth, like its eradication, is a purely local responsibility wherever it is found, and the wholesale conversion of the entire ummah to Pastafarianism overnight would change nothing whatsoever about it except some short-term shuffling of targets. This is our failing, not Park 51's or anybody else's. Ian B: almost wholly agree with your analysis of our degeneration from the secular and egalitarian framework of punishing harmful acts, to the spiritual and hierarchical project of reforming sinful sheep. That, I grant you, has a lot to do with the genesis of 'progress'. But it doesn't really have much to do with its excessive political support. Most people have small interest in reforming others, and are militantly uninterested in being reformed - particularly, as with modern politicians and their hangers-on, by classes of persons they despise. The lure for the public, and the driving force behind modern inquisitorialism, is the great maggot of Total Security. The sinner against this is whoever seems in any way unsafe to have around. This is the real pup we have been sold, and lies behind everything from paedo-panic universal vetting boards on one end of the scale, to prosecutions under any possible pretext for speech that gives offence (and may therefore provoke some fight somewhere) on the other. Justice punishes people only for actual crimes; security, for actuarial ones. These can't be reconciled, and we're presently headed down the wrong fork. If we can't convince enough people that it leads to a really dangerous place, then we will end up eaten by LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS!Northumbria police said the men were not arrested for watching or distributing the video, but on suspicion of burning the Qur'an.
The six men were arrested on suspicion of stirring racial hatred, police said, which is outlawed under the 1986 public order act. They were not arrested for the actual attack on, and burning of, the Qur'an, but in connection with the posting of the video. Section 21 of the 1986 act reads: "A person who distributes, or shows or plays, a recording of visual images or sounds which are threatening, abusive or insulting is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or … racial hatred is likely to be stirred up."
Posted by Ian B at September 24, 2010 09:55 AM
Posted by JP at September 24, 2010 10:17 AM
Posted by JadedLibertarian at September 24, 2010 10:36 AM
Posted by Ian B at September 24, 2010 10:39 AM
Posted by G at September 24, 2010 10:48 AM
Posted by pete at September 24, 2010 11:10 AM
Posted by DA at September 24, 2010 04:22 PM
Posted by Novus at September 24, 2010 05:27 PM
Posted by RG at September 24, 2010 05:30 PM
Posted by Yobbo at September 24, 2010 05:39 PMIt's disquieting, to say the least, that the conflation of religion and race goes unremarked in this post.
Posted by SH at September 24, 2010 07:34 PM
Posted by Dyspeptic Curmudgeon at September 24, 2010 07:37 PM
Posted by Dyspeptic Curmudgeon at September 24, 2010 07:40 PM
Posted by Stonyground at September 24, 2010 07:57 PM
Posted by APL at September 24, 2010 08:55 PM
Posted by Verity at September 24, 2010 11:48 PM
Saturday 25 September 2010
So it is illegal to burn a Koran, now?
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