Writing in Index on Censorship, Lord Anthony Lester argues that modifying existing law to tackle those who use religion as a proxy for race is a better alternative to a new law criminalizing religious hatred. He also highlights the confusion at the heart of this law…

New Labour’s plans for a law to prohibit incitement to religious hatred suffer from the twin vices of vagueness and uncertainty and over-breadth and a lack of proportion. Ministers have claimed that, “the proposed measure is not an extension of the law on blasphemy – it is about protecting people – not beliefs.”

But Ministers acknowledge that there is an, “understandable tendency to link the two” and that the public debate has, “led to some unrealistic expectations.”

…

So Mr Blunkett, the original Home Office architect of the proposals, believes that the offences are designed to protect beliefs rather than groups of people against what he terms “untruths”. In a similar vein, in a Commons debate, Mr Khalid Mahmood MP was apparently under the impression that the new offences would enable Salman Rushdie to be prosecuted for publishing his novel The Satanic Verses for stirring up religious hatred against beliefs as a statutory extension of blasphemy law.

… And ponts to a fairer and more effective alternative…

I support a declaratory amendment to Part III of the Public Order Act 1986 to make clear that, where what is ostensibly an attack on a group of persons by reference to their religion or belief is in fact an attack on them because of their ethnicity, the offence of inciting racial hatred is committed.

…

nstead of sweepingly broad new offences of stirring up religious hatred, we need a carefully tailored provision that makes it clear that all “racial groups”, including those who also belong to religious groups, are equally protected when hatred is stirred up against them because of their ethnicity.

… And an immediate solution…

There are formidable weapons in the existing criminal code to tackle verbal and physical attacks whether against or by racial and religious groups.

(Including, for example, the ugly violent demonstrations by Sikh militants in December 2004 against the showing by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre of Gurpreet Kaur Bhaitti’s play Behzti resulting in the closure of the production. Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti was forced to live in hiding for a while, on police advice. No one has been prosecuted for the serious offences that were committed.)

We need not new laws but the effective enforcement of existing laws by the police and prosecutors.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

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