Tony Blair, The Life of Brian, and all that

Greg Melia examines a modern blasphemy law

Imagine this scene. You are going about your daily business on the streets of Jerusalem (and I frankly don’t care whether that’s Israeli or Palestinian business — this thankfully isn’t one of those tiresome ‘free Palestine’ articles), when you are pushed to the wall by a crowd of people rushing into the square. They consist of a dozen or so men (granted, rather effeminate men), one haughty rabbi, and a poor bedraggled woman, who looks like she’s about to meet her maker in a rather unpleasant fashion. Why? “I only said…Jehovah” she begs. At this, out comes the crowd’s collection of large stones.

I trust that this scene isn’t new to you, so I shan’t bother to explain the finer plot details of Life of Brian here. Save to say, in Tony Blair’s envisioned Britain, the woman (yes, I mean the victim, not the women in the crowd) would have had questions to answer before the law. As, in fact, would the Monty Python team probably have done had the film been released today. I am of course, talking about the Racial and Religious Hatred bill in Parliament at the moment. Innocuous at first sight, it extends the Public Order act of 1986, changing the provision made there against racial hatred, so that, “behaviour or material are (or is) likely to be heard or seen in whom they are (or it is) likely to stir up racial or religious hatred” is outlawed.

The Government gives assurances that, “Hatred is a strong term. The offences will not encompass material that just stirs up ridicule or prejudice or causes offence. Further what must be stirred up is hatred of a group of persons defined by their religious beliefs and not hatred of the religion itself.” The problem here is that I identify very strongly with my faith, and if you insult it, you insult me. It’s impossible to insult a religion, without insulting its followers. Quite apart from the examples of both the blaspheming victim of execution and her hateful stoners in Life of Brian, and the hoards of Christians who protested in the streets at the film’s release, here’s another: “Roman Catholicism is an infantile faith, of quite astonishing flimsiness.” I don’t see how it’s possible to say that, and not insult the millions of Catholics you’ve just labelled as stupid. Plus, however much I’m assured that, “Hatred is a strong term”, I can’t quite forget the incident of an 80 year old heckler, thrown out of the Labour party conference a few months ago under the, err, terrorism laws. Many are concerned that it mentions behaviour, “likely to stir up … hatred”, and takes no account of the author’s intentions. Since a copy of this magazine, or its internet equivalent, is likely to fall at some point into the hands of a Young Earth Creationist, I’d better not insult YECs! What a pity I think their theory’s a joke. And what a pity the amendment by the House of Lords, to add an ‘intention clause’ and remove the “likely”, was quashed.

What strikes me most, however, is quite how unnecessary this bill is in the first place. The Government’s line is that since existing law prevents, “the incitement of hatred against mono-ethnic religious groups, such as Jews and Sikhs” (hatred of people whose religion is virtually synonymous with their ethnicity), it had better extend this so that all religions are protected — protecting only some religions would be unfair, wouldn’t it? But the only reason that these religions needed protecting was that if you insulted them, you were being automatically racist. This isn’t the case for other religions, so why should they need the same level of protection? After all, you have no choice in the matter of where your parents were born, but the choice of whether to follow God or not is all yours (sadly, for Christis’ subscriptions lists).

It is striking, that this arch-secular equivalent of the blasphemy laws (of countries the Government keeps suggesting we should bomb), is what fundamentalists of all persuasions, be they liberal, evangelical, or Muslim, have wanted for years. Though I doubt this law is going to be used on a harmless comedian or televangelist, it will certainly cause increased self-censorship. As Stephen Fry observed, “Religion, surely, if it is worth anything, doesn’t need protection against anything I can say.” The most easily offended usually hold the most self-assured, logically insecure positions. Those who take themselves too seriously, do so because they can’t face up to laughter when they’re exposed to the outside world. They rely somewhat on insularity and circular arguments; hence it is these, whom robust debate would expose and therefore help the most, who would react most strongly, and be ‘protected’ the most, under this bill. I can’t help but imagine a polarisation in the church (and British religion in general), consisting at one end of wishy washy, universalist parish priests, cowed by religious hatred legislation into being ever more inoffensive and toothless (integrated even, to paraphrase Graham Martin, from the last issue of Christis).

At the other end, will be those who don’t want to live with any conflicting religions bringing them and their ridiculous claims back down to Earth, and thanks to this legislation, don’t have to. Out of the piercing eye of public ridicule — which counts as hatred if they react irrationally enough — their illogical doctrine will go relatively unchallenged.

Those two sides form a Church which I as a Christian most certainly do not wish to see. They form an unhealthy, diseased Body of Christ. This is the Body of Christ that I love, but which could suffer greatly from the sort of insecure inability to take itself less seriously, that this bill promotes, and which will in all probability keep the Church small in this overly secular nation and age.

Oh well. If it does protect Opus Dei et al, at least it should save us from badly written rubbish like the Da Vinci Code. Always look on the bright side of life.

Greg Melia

Photo: edvvc via flicr.com