THE WHOLE religious complexion of the modern world, said the writer and clergy-baiter Havelock Ellis early in the last century, “is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum”. It is to be a crime, says David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, for a person to use abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or to display any written material which is abusive or insulting, “if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred”.
“I shudder”, said the Victorian freethinker, G. J. Holyoake, at a public lecture in Cheltenham, “at the thought of religion. I flee the Bible as a viper and revolt at the touch of a Christian, for their tender mercies may next fall on my head.” It is to be a criminal offence, says Mr Blunkett in 2004, to stir up “hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief”.
“No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me,” said Jesus. It is to be a criminal offence, says Mr Blunkett, to stir up “hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to lack of religious belief”. (My italics) “God”, wrote H. L. Menken (for publication) more than 50 years ago, “is the immemorial refuge of the helpless, the incompetent, the miserable.” The “publication, distribution or display” of “written material”, says Mr Blunkett, is to be an offence if, “having regard to all the circumstances, the material is likely to be heard or seen by any person in whom it is likely to stir up religious hatred.”
“Bad weather”, declared the comedian Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder , “is God’s way of telling us to burn more Catholics.” Those responsible for stage plays and broadcasts, says Mr Blunkett, or for “distributing, showing or playing a recording”, may be prosecuted if “having regard to all the circumstances the performance is likely to be attended” (or the recording seen or heard) “by any person in whom the performance (taken as a whole) is likely to stir up religious hatred.”
“I do not believe that Muhammad or anyone else was impelled by ‘divine inspiration’,” wrote Bertrand Russell to an outraged Muslim offended by his writing. “To call (Muhammad’s flight from Mecca) ‘strategic withdrawal’ is ludicrous . . . PS I am opposed to all superstition, Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Buddhist.” The crime of incitement to religious hatred, says Mr Blunkett, is to apply even to those whose use of words or arguments may not have intended to cause offence, but “religious hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby”.
“I condemn Christianity,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in The Antichrist, “I raise against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that any accuser ever uttered. It is to me the highest of all conceivable corruptions . . . To abolish any distress ran counter to its deepest advantages. It lived on distress. It created distress, to eternalise itself . . . Parasitism is the only practice of the Church . . . This eternal indictment of Christianity I will write on all walls . . .
“I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, stealthy, subterranean, small enough — I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.”
Mr Blunkett’s new crime is to apply not only to those who do in practice stir up racial hatred, but who evidently want to, even if they fail. He has won over some critics. The rest of us remain profoundly wary of ministers who assure us at the dispatch box that they do not have it in mind to criminalise what should remain lawful. It is not what Mr Blunkett has it in his mind to do which should bother us; it is the ordinary meaning of the words which he is passing into law.
I, and many others, are seriously concerned at Section 10 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill now going through the Commons. The section amends existing race relations legislation so that it will include in its net the stirring-up of religious as well as racial hatred.
Mr Blunkett protests that, as with race relations, the intention is to protect individuals, not ideas, from attack. The difficulty here is that (broadly speaking) “race” defines a human group, rather than an idea, so racial attacks are almost by their very nature hateful towards individuals and therefore easily criminalised. Religion, however, is essentially an idea, not a group, but an idea so deeply held by so identifiable a group that to attack it can often seem like an attack on the group too. In many religious groups adherents define themselves as individuals by reference to their faith. There is no way you can attack their ideas, therefore, without being (in their eyes) hateful to them.
And religion is an idea which is spearheaded and spread by professionals and amateurs: clerics and lay evangelists. If you think the idea that they are spreading is poisonous then you think that they are spreading poison: I do think that about some faiths and sects. It is not a nice thing to say about anyone, that they are spreading poison, corrupting their society, and wrecking lives. Nor is it nice to say that their converts are dupes, or dysfunctional, or being turned into zombies. To say so does encourage hatred of these people. But I think it may be important to say so.
There is a huge danger at the centre of the thinking which grounds this measure. What counts as hateful depends very much on the sensitivities and tolerances of the complainant. As we never tire of reminding ourselves, you can get away with verbal aggression towards Christianity which would be considered unacceptable if directed towards Islam. It follows that the less tolerant any religious group is of criticism or mockery, the greater the protection the proposed new law will offer them. But these may be the very faiths or sects which ought to be confronted — confronted and attacked for the very intolerance and self-righteousness which, if this measure becomes law, will be adduced as evidence of their “sensitivity”. In the 1970s this used to be defined as “self-defined” oppression: the notion that it is for you to say what oppresses you. It is a nonsense.
We who fear that Mr Blunkett’s Bill diminishes an important freedom should be honest, however. We are too apt to rest our case on the need to question and criticise religious ideas. The Home Secretary protests that this can always be done politely, and though we should be wary of that argument — polemic is important to debate — he does have a point: some arguments against (or between) religions can be pursued forcefully but without hostility or ridicule. What we critics of the proposals should admit is that the freedom to express hostility, mockery, even hatred, is important to us.
Religion can oppress. I hate — yes hate — the sect and its followers who are stopping women in Saudi Arabia from voting. Religion can bully, it can cow, it can coerce. One of the ways it does so is by impressing upon its adherents the idea that none dare offend it, twit it or tweak its tail. Such sects or faiths cast a spell — cultural, even political, as well as theological — over their adherents. Such spells must be broken. A necessary weapon in the hands of those who would do so is ridicule, contempt and the power of real anger. Ask Voltaire: scorn, laughter, calumny and abuse are vital to those who confront bullies.
At the very core of many faiths lies a kind of hatred of and a tremendous insult to non-believers. How else can you characterise the teaching that unbelievers are eternally damned? The very word “infidel” is hateful. To fight such teaching we need recourse to language that goes beyond disagreement, but expresses our violent antipathy, on occasions our rage, at those who peddle them, our contempt for those who are taken in and those who take them in. The Home Secretary should beware. If his net catches us, it will catch them too.
