Shakira Hussein’s vivid account
of her family’s “chutnification” – what she calls “the product
of immigration, spiritual curiosity, globalisation and
intermarriage (in some cases, multiple)” is not just endearing
– it warrants several novels. What it doesn’t warrant is more
bad legislation in the name of “security” and pacifying groups
from government ministries which, as in the case of Britain’s
Home Office, have already given us far too much.
Ms Hussein imagines that the amendment to the Serious
Organised Crime and Police Bill, creating a new offence of incitement to religious hatred,
would have the effect of protecting faith and perhaps
attendant ethnicity. But it would certainly have the opposite
effect. By signalling the possibility of prosecution, it would
create a chain of reactions: encourage the taking of offence,
inflame tempers and a sense of grievance, and give publicity
to those who often seek it for nefarious purposes. As for
violence to persons on any grounds, there is already ample
legislation in the statute books to deal with that.
The Home Office has renamed the proposed offence after
protests from the writers’ organisation English PEN (of which
I am deputy president), the writer Salman
Rushdie, the actor Rowan Atkinson, and many others. But
even under the new definition – “hatred against persons on
racial or religious grounds” – the legislation will help to
induce (self-)censorship in Britain’s artistic, broadcasting
and publishing establishments. Corporations and sponsors are
not known for their bravery. Lawyers almost always err on the
side of caution, and will simply put provocative work of any
kind to one side rather than spend months in court waiting for
the attorney-general’s ruling on individual cases.
More broadly, the offence will also create a climate in
which expression is constrained for those who might wish to
criticise some of the palpable ills associated with religious
hierarchies, which are extensive in Britain and many other
countries.
It gets worse. The breadth of the legislation, whatever the
government’s assurances, is misunderstood by many, including
its parliamentary supporters in the ruling Labour party. I
attended the debate in the House of Commons on 7 February and
needed to read the official report in the daily journal Hansard just to make sure I wasn’t
mishearing. Khalid Mahmood, member of parliament (MP)
for Birmingham, Perry Barr (and a Muslim), is happy to defend
free speech in its generality, but he showed a very real
intolerance in relation to specific instances. He was ready to
see the law tested precisely in the way that writers and
journalists – indeed anyone who works for the media – fear. I
quote from Hansard:
“Diane Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North
and Stoke Newington: (Khalid Mahmood) says that nobody
in the Muslim community denies that people should be able to
make valid criticisms of the religion, but I was a Member of
Parliament at the time of The Satanic Verses, and
there were thousands and thousands of Muslims who believed
emphatically that people were not entitled to criticise
their religion.
Khalid Mahmood: I am sorry, but I take issue with
that. It was not a question of making a valid criticism of
the religion. In the context of Salman Rushdie, the issue
was the abusive words that he deliberately used, which were
written in phonetic Urdu, criticising –
[interruption.] Actual swear words were used within
that text.
Alice Mahon, Labour MP for Halifax:
Who decides?
Khalid Mahmood: The decision is taken in the
courts, if it comes to that. As (Frank Dobson, Labour MP for
Holborn and St. Pancras) said, there will be an opportunity
for some of those cases and issues to be tested. In a sense,
that is what the judicial system is about and what this
democracy is about: giving people that opportunity.”
Salman Rushdie has already responded to Khalid Mahmood’s enduringly
misleading description of relevant portions of his novel The Satanic Verses. Shakira Hussein
may want protection from malign criticism of her faith, but
what this parliamentary exchange suggests is that legislation
against religious hatred may incur more of it, as
various faiths – sensitised even more to their differences
from one another, to real or imagined slights, and to the
possiblity of winning legal sanction for their position – take
each other to court. It will also endanger even further the
very writer she so admires.
If even the government’s own parliamentary supporters have
false expectations of this new offence, is it too much to
imagine how widespread these expectations will be outside
parliament and what serious constraints on expression will
follow?
