No time to add much to the debate on ‘religious hatred’ (we have posted several items on the issue here) but there are several other contributions to the debate in the press this weekend.
David Blunkett presents the case in the Observer for his new ‘religious hatred’ law. In Saturday’s Guardian Madeleine Bunting also attempted to make the case for the new law.
From the other side of the debate, also in the Observer, Nick Cohen has a piece which looks at the issue, as well as some of the fallout from the murder of Theo Van Gogh.
Why not go along with the new tough liberalism and, as David Blunkett is suggesting, make it a criminal offence to incite religious hatred? There are plenty of reasons why not; many were well made in the Commons last week, but MPs didn’t point out that when society decides that people’s religion, rather than their class or gender, is the cultural fact that matters, power inevitably passes to the priests and the devout for whom religion does indeed matter most.
To their shame, many on the left have broken with the Enlightenment to perform this manoeuvre. They have ridden the Islamic wave and agreed to convert one billion people into ‘the Muslims’. A measure of their bad faith is that they would react with horror if this trick was pulled on them, and they were turned into ‘the Christians’ whose authentic representatives were the Archbishop of Canterbury and ‘Dr’ Ian Paisley.
