Criticising religion should be exempt from harassment laws, say MPs
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/blasphemy-islamophobia-harassment-mp-bill-free-speech-dqsxr7swj
by ThatchersDirtyTaint
Criticising religion should be exempt from harassment laws, say MPs
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/blasphemy-islamophobia-harassment-mp-bill-free-speech-dqsxr7swj
by ThatchersDirtyTaint
31 comments
You can harass a person, you cannot harass an idea.
“The Freedom of Expression (Religion or Belief System) Bill would make clear that the provision of the Public Order Act does not apply in the case of “discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents”.”
While I agree with what they want I can not seeing it having a chance of coming to fruition
Then add proselytizing to the list of forms of harassment.
Also
Lets make our country fiercely secular now, before it’s too late
Criticising organised religion should be fair game. And while we’re at it, let’s remove tax exemption.
Yep, it should not be a prison-able offence to critique myths, not in modern day Britain anyway.
there should be no exceptions in law related to religion, there can be no blasphemy law when one religion things another is blasphemous.
where does that end?
no one has the right not to be offended, no group has the right to silence those critical of it
Yeah, fuck those Catholics especially out of wedlock!
i think a lot of redditors would agree if this sort of law was enforced against critisim of Christianity. Imaging facing fines for calling God “skydaddy” or other reddit norms. But they wont because reddit.
It seems like this should be fairly straightforward (but clearly isn’t currently). If someone is using religion to harass an individual, then I don’t think that should be protected, necessarily.
If you’re using religion to protest at an embassy, though, then that absolutely should be legal.
Since when has criticizing anything at all been harassment.
Harassment and criticism are not the same thing.
I should be able to criticise religion as much as any fictional book.
Criticism of religion should be treated in the same way as criticism of the government or public officials. If a government official would consider a particular form of criticism unacceptable such as hate speech, incitement, or personal attacks then it shouldn’t be considered acceptable when directed at religious beliefs or communities either. There should be a consistent standard. If we demand civility and responsibility in political discourse, the same should apply to religious discourse.
I ain’t even religious, but I’ve never seen this rhetoric where you cannot criticise a religion. If you’re not being hateful or insulting to other people religion, I’ve found most people are very open to a discussion about their religion. That is people who actually practice and not just say they’re so and so religion in name.
Religion is arguably fictional and should be open to criticism. If society cannot criticize things that could be made up then we live in a world of make believe.
Criticising religion should be a sacrosanct human right.
Any religion should be able to cope with criticism, just like ideas and opinions, as long as it isn’t done in a hateful or abusive way.
It absolutely should…
There’s no more appropriate target for mockery than religion.
It already is isn’t it? A specific extension of our, already broad, laws around incitement, harassment etc just sounds like it would end up being
“that weird hack the police don’t want you to know that allows you to harass people legally”
If some religion calls dogs “dirty”/haram, I’d like to be free to openly criticise it. I don’t want to live in society where hating on dogs is acceptable, for example. I don’t want this to spread in any Western community to accommodate some religious group’s sensitivities. I want my dog to eat, shit, play and enjoy life freely without a fear of being called “haram” by a certain religion. All in all, I want to be free to exercise my right to hate religions that hate dogs.
I think the laws should be clarified and tightened up in the direction of protecting speech, but there is a balance. I don’t think this guy should have been convicted but I wouldn’t want to give racists or sectarians carte blanche to actually harass people and use religious criticism as a defence.
So it should be.
And those that decide to defend that religion by violence should be jailed no exception.
If Muslim were so solid in their beliefs they wouldn’t attempt to permanently silence anyone who’s critical of them.
Where would depicting an image of your lad Muhammad come under such a proposal, if you were doing so to demonstrate your disagreement with the idea that his image should not be depicted? What some might consider critique or satire may be deemed as harassment by adherents.
You can criticise religion, but harassing people should be illegal.
If people are just gonna disguise hate speech as criticism, then they might as well just limit criticism
Blasphemy laws will make religious fanatics even more dangerous.
If the religion can’t withstand scrutiny or mockery then it will fail, rightly so, religion (or atheism)should be arrived at freely.
Instead of introducing a specific exemption the interpretation of one offence in one piece of legislation, we should just remove all references to offensive or causing offence or likely to offend from all applicable existing laws. That’s the thing that’s often used against people, particularly in prosecutions for things said online. Harassment has never really been the issue since that’s pretty well defined and needs to be targeted, repeated behaviour against a person. You already can’t harass an idea – legally, that’s a non-concept.
Any confirmed sightings of your preferred deity gives you immunity from harassment as the deity/god/superbeing will protect you from everything as they are omnipotent.
Of course, the call for blasphemy laws only applies to Islam. Christianity is criticised and mocked every day. Jesus and/or Christ are used as an expletive extensively on TV, radio, in the pub, in books, etc., etc. If someone used the name of Mohammed or Allah in the same way they are likely to be prosecuted for hate speech.
Are we still talking about this? The guy was arrested for acting like a prick, starting a fire and yelling and swearing in a public place. And he got a slap in the wrist punishment.
If instead he’s gone and shouted fuck Erdogan and the AKP and burnt a Turkish flag he’d probably still been attacked by the embassy guys and probably still been arrested for acting like a prick.
Religion is only very tangentially related to why he was charged, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth about it when no one has any plans to bring back blasphemy laws is getting tiresome.
Let’s pretend burning a book as a bigoted act of antagonism is “criticising religion”. What bunch of idiotic, easily led children believe this nonsense?
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