Hating the Hate
The UK new hate law is making its way through the legislative channels, even as members of Parliament devastate its logic. Link. Excerpt:
It was a fine debate, during which the Home Secretary was reduced to repeating bald assertions of obvious nonsense.
MPs were incredulous at his flat insistence that the Bible and the Koran were incapable of containing words calculated to incite religious hatred. To the Reverend Ian Paisley (DUP, N Antrim), Mr Clarke replied: “Statements in the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and other faith books – the Koran, for instance – are precisely that. They are not incitements to hatred.”
This prompted Boris Johnson to offer the following passages from the Koran: “As for the unbelievers, for them garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skins shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods.”
Meanwhile, Edward Leigh (C, Gainsborough) had turned his attention to the Bible, where Jesus says: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. . . . You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to Hell?”
According to the Home Secretary these are not the kind of statement that could encourage hatred. There is a growing Alice-in-Wonderland feeling about Mr Clarke's pronouncements.
