Recently three people were given prison sentences for their part in the ‘Sharia patrols’. They also received a further punishment, a five year ban on the promotion of Sharia law:
The three men were today also slapped with a five-year Asbo banning them from distributing material about Sharia Law to the public, or even meeting each other.
The trio are also banned from associating with controversial preacher Anjem Choudary.
Judge Timothy Pontius admitted the order was ‘drastic’ but added: ‘With the public interest in mind and the safety of individual members of the public in particular, it seems to me essential that these orders should be granted to run for that period of time.’
I wondered at the time whether this ruling could be seen as problematic and so was interested to read the different opinions offered under this post. One should be able to promote ideas most of us regard as offensive as long as the law on, for example, incitement is not broken. But because of the way these men promoted Sharia law – targeting individuals aggressively, rather than just making offensive statements to a more general audience – I think the ASBO seems justifiable. It should not (I think) be seen as setting a precedent for any wider clamp down on the freedoms of unpleasant theocrats (as long as they stay within the law). However, as one of the commenters noted, one element of the ruling, the ban on ‘distributing material’ might seem more questionable. It “not only has implications for freedom of expression but is unrelated to the offences.”
Update: Professor Eric Heinze has reservations about the ASBO. There’s no link as this was copied from a Facebook conversation but he is happy to be quoted:
“There’s no disagreement on punishing physical assaults, or even verbal ones when they genuinely are “assaults”, i.e., of the harassment or stalking type. The law has long done that, and it has nothing to do with speakers’ political views. English law is entirely wrong, however, to construe as an “assault” the sheer fact that people stand in the street and shout obnoxious ideas. Threatening someone with a fist in the face is an assault. Threatening someone with eternal damnation in Hell is not.”
