IF THE HALAL debate in Westminster Hall on Monday marked an attempt to roll back the insidious encroachment of Islam on our society – brought about by uncontrolled mass immigration, then last Tuesday saw another attempt, this one in the Commons proper.
There, to an almost deserted chamber, we saw Nick Timothy – former aide to Theresa May – present for its first reading a private member’s bill to the House, under the title: Freedom of Expression (Religion or Belief System), a Bill ‘to make provision about freedom of expression in relation to religion or belief systems; and for connected purposes’.
Timothy’s opening was nothing if not direct. ‘I do not believe that Mohammed was a Prophet sent by God’, he said. ‘I do not accept the instructions he said he received from the Archangel Gabriel. I do not accept that the Sunna, or body of Islamic laws, has any relevance to me’.
Outside parliament, in certain circumstances, that statement might qualify as ac hate crime under the current regime, which sort of underlined what the Bill was really all about.
‘I respect the religious beliefs of others’, Timothy continued, ‘but I do not mind if Mohammed is satirised, criticised or mocked. I am not a Muslim, and I choose not to live by the moral codes set out by Islam. I am a Christian, and I should make it clear that I do not think anybody should be prosecuted for satirising, criticising or mocking Jesus either”.
Coming to the point, he explained by way of background that England and Wales abolished blasphemy laws in 2008, and Scotland abolished them in 2021, but even then, those laws had not been used for decades.
The last blasphemy trial took place in 1977, and the state had not brought a public prosecution for blasphemy in more than a century. But now, he said, blasphemy laws are back.
With real examples going through the criminal justice system right now, Timothy defined the issue as the way that Sections 4 & 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 were being used – far beyond the intent of parliament – to police what we can and cannot say about Islam.
Initially, he explained, the purpose of the Act was to abolish some common law and statutory offences to make way for new offences relating to public order, but nowhere in the Second Reading debate from 1986 did anybody raise the need to protect religions or followers of religions from offence (in the context that proceedings in the House can be cited in court as evidence of intent, rather like the travaux préparatoires when interpreting the meaning of a treaty).
The context of the Act was football hooliganism and the riots in Brixton and Broadwater Farm. And while Part III created new offences relating to racial hatred, and this was amended to include religious hatred by the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, Section 29J of the Public Order Act, says:
Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents.
On that basis, Timothy and his colleagues are confident that the Act, even as amended, was never intended to become a blasphemy law, a conclusion reinforced by the fact that the controversies regarding blasphemy and Islam in this country began two years after its introduction, in 1988, with the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’.
Since that year, and the protests and fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie, our public conversation about Islam has been limited through a mixture of self-censorship and more official restrictions, such as the definition of Islamophobia accepted by many public bodies.
These restrictions, Timothy avers, are motivated not by a desire to avoid offence – consider the criticism and mockery made of other religions – but by fear of a violent response by those who are offended.
Nevertheless, he makes passing referenced to suggestions that public order offences are not the same as a blasphemy law, and that it can be legitimate to prosecute somebody for saying something that might cause wider disorder.
In some circumstances that could be so, but in one current episode, the CPS gave the game away by charging one man with causing ‘distress’ to the ‘religious institution of Islam’, which is pretty much the dictionary definition of blasphemy.
Secondly, twisting the law to make a protestor responsible for the violent reaction of those who will not tolerate the opinions of others is wrong; it destroys our freedom of speech, he says.
Some argue that although this may be regrettable, it is now an unavoidable consequence of the multicultural society in which we live today. But, by this logic, the state must police the boundaries between different ethnic and religious groups to avoid disorder, which means state intrusion and a loss of liberty on some occasions, and mob rule on others.
This, says Timothy, is the very essence of the two-tier policing row we have seen recently: rough justice for those belonging to identity groups that play by the rules, and freedom from justice for those belonging to groups willing to take to the streets and threaten violence.
This, he argues, is the logic of using the Public Order Act to prohibit us from saying what we like about a religion. A person may be found guilty because of the violent reaction of those offended by their actions.
From Sir Salman Rushdie to the Batley teacher still in hiding with his family, he goes on, the threat of violence is what lies behind these new blasphemy laws and, with the number of people here who came from those countries growing and the increasing assertiveness of organised political Islam in Britain, this is a problem that seems likely only to get more severe.
Timothy, though, asserts that the answer is not to surrender to the mob but to hold the line, which brings him to the nub of his Bill.
The problem he identifies is that section 29J of Act – which protects ‘criticism’, etc., of ‘religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents’ – only applies to part III of the legislation.
It does not apply to Sections 4 & 5 in Part I of the Act, which make it an offence to cause ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ by using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour’. And it is these sections which are being used to criminalise the expression of opinions about religious belief.
Timothy’s Bill, therefore, would extend the scope of section 29J to the whole Public Order Act – thus preventing the use of sections 4 and 5 as a de facto blasphemy law – and would apply section 29J also to section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.
In so doing, this Bill would restore free speech as it applies to religion in England and Wales, and stop the police, prosecutors and judges from creating a blasphemy law from legislation that was never passed for that purpose.
It would send the strongest powerful message from parliament, where political power legitimately and democratically resides (in theory, at least), that this country will not tolerate intimidation, violence or censorship, that there will be no special treatment here for Islam, and that there will be no surrender to the thugs who want to impose their beliefs and culture on the rest of us.
And that was it. There being no procedural steps to block the Bill, it goes forward with the support of eleven other MPs, John Cooper, Dr Luke Evans, Richard Holden, Robert Jenrick, Rupert Lowe, Rebecca Paul, Jack Rankin, Sir Alec Shelbrooke, Bradley Thomas, Tom Tugendhat and Sir Gavin Williamson.
The second reading is scheduled for 11 July, when there will be a full debate and a vote. One can expect all the ‘usual suspects’ out in force, pleading for their ‘communities’ to be protected. The outcome will be a real test of parliament, as to whether it is prepared to protect the rights of the individual or turn over the state (in further part) to the rule of Islam.
Meanwhile, as violence has erupted in the Northern Irish town of Ballymena, after two immigrant teenagers and a man were accused of raping a young, local girl.
Now in its second night – not helped by a senior police officer referring to everyone as a “racist thug”, asserting that the situation was “racist thuggery”, the violence is being taken as a sign of things to come, unless government gets a grip on uncontrolled immigration.
Those looking to Reform, though, might be disappointed, with Farage having appointed a new chairman, an open homosexual who seems keen on sex education for nine-year-olds, with an emphasis on LBGT issues, and is also asserting the obvious untruth that ‘immigration is the lifeblood of this country, it always has been’.
It is now down to the political class as a whole to decide whether to draw a line, with the first step already taken on Tuesday. If it ducks the issue, there are those who are now convinced that civil war awaits us. But, while the fightback may have started, the signs don’t look good.
This article was first published in Turbulent Times on June 11 and is republished here by kind permission
