Yes, I know, but he’ll do so in response to complaints. Who do you think will be complaining?

Jim,

You’ve got a fair point, but so has Blimpish.

> pointing out the law is used infrequently isn’t a good argument in favour of inequality under it.

The point isn’t so much that it’s used infrequently as why it’s used infrequently: jury nullification. We have a long and fine tradition in this country of effectively repealing laws without officially repealing them. Of course, this could perhaps be explained better to Muslims if it weren’t for every Government’s staunch opposition to ever admitting that jury nullification is possible.

"Most of this violent mass annihilation has essentially been financed by the larger Middle Eastern Muslim countries with Saudi Arabia as the primary financier".

Just wondered, since it should be relatively easy to bring up some counterfacts?

S2’s basically right though – it’s not a live issue, all the more so since the Human Rights Act. But the blasphemy law is just another feature of Establishment. Now, Muslim immigrants might well dislike Establishment – but it’s never been exactly a secret that this we have (formally) a Christian state, and to complain after you’ve take residency that this is somehow offensive to your basic rights seems a bit rum, to say the least.

(That’s not to say that Muslims couldn’t argue for Disestablishment, just not that this is somehow a matter of justice, life and death. After all, R.C.s are more explicitly discriminated against than Muslims – and few of them seem to give a stuff.)

Let me reiterate that I am against this Incitement legislation. It’s vitally important you don’t mistake this for an argument in favour of the law (because it’s not). However there is – as I see it – a serious social problem that needs to be addressed. This law is an attempt to address it. It’s a bad attempt, but I’m honestly unsure as to what better approach there might be.

The dilemma, as I see it, is a simple one. Christianity is indeed protected by law; and pointing out the law is used infrequently isn’t a good argument in favour of inequality under it. Similarly jews are protected by the incitement to racial hatred legislation (as are Sikhs incidentally).

This leaves out a lot of us… atheists, buddhists, pagans, moslems, satanists, hindus, etc etc.

However, in the current cultural context it’s naive (or a deliberate misunderstanding) to deny that Islam is a special case amongst the "excluded faiths". There is (at least perceived to be) an opposition between Islam and Christianity on the one hand, and Islam and Judaism on the other. This is often cast as an opposition between Islam and Judeo-Christianity; though as rebikker illustrates there’s hardly universal love between Jewish and Christian culture.

So the issue, to me, is that a significant minority of the British population (one with a strong cultural identity) can – with good reason – feel that they are being discriminated against by a legal system willing to protect christians and jews but not them.

This is something I believe badly needs to be addressed. Such inequality can only work to increase friction within and between communities and provide extremists with a recruiting device.

Again, let me make clear, I am against this law. But I don’t know how else to address this dangerous (in my view) injustice.

It is difficult to get from this law (however ill-thought out it may be) to Wahhabists controlling speech in Britain without using some kind of dangerous and aevidential theory much like those that argue that Jews control the world.

Are you going to put an argument forward for your moral indignation, or is that it?

I stand corrected. I had no idea anyone was still bothering with such crap that recently. There’s always one.

Still, how many prosecutions were there between, say, 1945 and 1977? And do we think the rate of prosecutions on behalf of aggrieved Wahhabists under the new law will be similar to or higher than that?

The last successful prosecution using the Blasphemy Law was in 1977. Which, while pre-interweb, is hardly ancient history.