AT OPPOSITE ends of the political spectrum, and opposite ends of the country, two extremists have recently faced trial, charged with inciting racial hatred.

Abu Hamza al-Masri and Nick Griffin have, on the surface, nothing in common: the hook-handed, one-eyed, 47-year-old Islamic cleric and the suited, one-eyed, 48-year-old leader of the far-right British National Party detest one another. Only on the subject of Jews might they find ideological agreement.

Yet both men defended their words on the ground of free speech; both insisted that they were not racist; and both trials have served to confuse still further the issue of what can and cannot be said in Britain. Messrs Abu Hamza and Griffin became unlikely allies.

The contrasting verdicts will do little to clarify the issue. With Abu Hamza found guilty on most charges and sentenced to prison, and Mr Griffin acquitted on two charges but facing retrial on two more, the line between acceptable comment and incitement may seem more blurred than ever.

Abu Hamza sat in the Old Bailey, hulking and watchful, as prosecutors levelled 15 charges of inciting murder and racial hatred against him. Huge and grey-haired, his handless arms thrust deep into the pockets of his traditional blue shalwar kameez tunic, he seemed a very different figure from the eye-glinting street preacher of Finsbury Park mosque: less of a caricature, visibly exhausted and often confused.

The prosecutors accused the Egyptian-born cleric of using words, “the most dangerous weapons available”, to try to “ignite the tinderbox” of Islamic anger by preaching “murder and hatred”.

As a witness, he would wander off on liturgical tangents, before being wrenched back to cross-examination by the judge and lawyers. But his very vagueness seemed part of the defence case. “It is not clear that he is inciting audiences to do anything specific, in terms of time, place, circumstances or legality,” his lawyer said.

But while he sat in the London dock his words were also being heard loudly in a Leeds courtroom. Defending Mr Griffin’s description of Islam as “a vicious, wicked faith”, his lawyers showed a videotape featuring one of the Islamic preacher’s most incendiary sermons: one radical using the extremism of the other to justify his own.

Mr Griffin offered a startling counterpoint to Abu Hamza. Self-consciously dapper in blue suit and tie, he chose his words with calculating precision, went out of his way to emphasise his claims to scholarship, to rational argument, to Anglo-Saxon political respectability.

If Mr Griffin’s language is more subtle than Abu Hamza’s, the far-right themes were unmistakable: Muslims are taking over; they get preferential treatment; attacks on whites are forgotten and unreported.

Neither man was on trial for the nastiness of his opinions, but on the specific charges of inciting racial hatred. But how do you measure incitement? More importantly, how do you measure intention to incite hatred, when there may be no hard evidence of the supposed effects of that incitement?

Those are the questions surrounding the clash between the Danish cartoonists and Muslims; the same questions were raised by two comparable trials, with different defendants, and different answers.

Explore UK News

• Science News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Savers left in limbo as Icesave freezes deposits
• Kennel Club changes breeding rules
• Passengers triple risk of fatal crashes