Starmer made several recommendations in a series of Downing Street press conferences to put an end to the rioting, orchestrated by what he called ‘far-right thuggery’. He vowed to punish those involved in criminal damage with lengthy prison terms. Subsequently, he threatened to use facial recognition software to identify the most extreme agitators. The most concerning thing he said was that social media companies should be held more accountable for spreading ‘disinformation’. A dire warning was then issued to everyone who would sow discord by disseminating false information, rumours, or speculation online. 

Of course, false information has circulated widely in recent weeks, both online and off. The majority of the unrest was caused by the blatantly false allegation that the stabbing suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker. Whatever else they indicate, however, the events of August 2024 serve as a terrifying reminder of what happens when the state attempts to control free speech.

The official UK government X account posted  a message on social media warning users to ‘think before you post’, as, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, ‘content that incites violence or hatred isn’t just harmful—it can be illegal.’ If this had come from a friend over a pint in the pub, it wouldn’t have been quite as bad, but this was from an organisation that can put someone in jail for speaking their mind. 

This was the fate of Lee Joseph Dunn, who was sentenced to two months in jail for posting what Cumbria Police called offensive and racially aggravated content online. The 51-year-old Sellafield worker shared three separate images on Facebook. The first featured a group of men who appeared to be Asian and was captioned, ‘Coming to a town near you.’ Another showed Asian-looking men stepping off a boat onto Whitehaven Beach with the caption, ‘When it’s on your turf, then what?’ The final one, which shows men with Asian-like features brandishing knives in front of the Palace of Westminster, was also captioned, ‘Coming to a town near you.’ Offensive? Controversial? Perhaps. However, jail time for words that refrained from inciting violence?

Elon Musk has now become involved. The CEO of X and US tech billionaire took to his own platform. ‘Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?’, he joked, going on to post a Family Guy meme of Peter Griffin about to be executed with the statement, ‘In 2030 for making a Facebook comment the UK government didn’t like.’ He then engaged in a spat with former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, accusing him of being a ‘super, super racist’ who ‘loathes white people.’ Musk is most likely alluding to Humza’s time as the Justice Minister, during which he went on the now-famous ‘white’ tirade, citing a long list of governmental positions along with the colour of the holder’s skin. Remind me about inciting racial hatred again?

The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, directed her words towards the online ‘armchair thugs’ she said were to blame. Cooper asserted during an appearance on Radio 4’s Today programme that social media companies were responsible for the ‘shocking misinformation that has escalated’ the riots.

It is likely that some of the people who were arrested will face charges under the Online Safety Act, which criminalises sending false information. Meanwhile, the 2003 Communications Act—specifically Section 127—makes it illegal to send ‘grossly offensive’ messages. If it is ruled that the defendant was motivated by ‘hate’, the sentence may be increased.

That’s the problem with grey areas in the law. It creates definition creep. How do you define hatred? Some people view shouting as violent, but there are no elaborate hate speech laws that prohibit shouting—unless you include the 61-year-old man who was sentenced to 18 months in jail for chanting ‘Who the fuck is Allah?’ in front of the police during a demonstration outside Downing Street on 31 July. People who often cheer the loudest for censorship run the very real risk of experiencing its authoritarian sting themselves. During the Middlesbrough riots, Hope Not Hate CEO Nick Lowles falsely claimed on Twitter that an acid attack had been committed against a Muslim woman. Now, he has apologised. The lesson? Be careful what you wish for. 

It may seem counterintuitive, but it is possible to loathe the rioters’ actions while simultaneously criticising the government’s response and its effects on civil liberties. Any crackdown on free speech, misinformation, or the enduring abstraction of ‘hatred’ will never be limited to those actively committing violent crimes or causing harm to others. It will be used as a weapon against those who have dissenting opinions or criticise government overreach.

Nigel Farage is a case in point. The leader of Reform UK released an ill-advised video implying that the authorities may be hiding important details about the Southport suspect and his possible intentions from the public. For the record, Farage did not repeat any of the false assertions made online that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker. Nevertheless, he was accused by LBC’s James O’Brien of directly inciting the riots. The ‘left-wing Limbaugh’ now refers to them as the ‘Farage riots’. If someone assaulted Nigel Farage after listening to this, should James O’Brien be arrested for incitement to violence? No. That’s the thing about free speech. It’s for everyone, not just the people we agree with. 

By labelling everyone as far-right, you run the risk of associating all right-of-centre journalists, populist politicians, and people with moderately centrist viewpoints with extremists and racists. ‘Far-right narratives’ were being mainstreamed after the Southport tragedy, according to the anti-racism organisation Hope Not Hate. How do you define ‘far-right’? According to Hope Not Hate, one defining feature of being far right is believing that multiculturalism isn’t working in the U.K. That opinion, by the way, is a mainstream, majority view, according to Hope Not Hate’s own research.

Some have demanded strong restrictions on so-called ‘Islamophobia’, using the riots as a pretext. The Daily Mail, according to suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana, has ‘fanned the flames of hate and normalised Islamophobic and anti-migrant rhetoric.’ Labour also adopted the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims’ divisive definition of Islamophobia while they were in opposition, promising to enact it into law if they were elected. This would effectively make criticising Islam, and potentially even critiquing Islamist terrorism, illegal. It would be a de facto Islamic blasphemy law. When London Mayor Sadiq Khan met with Starmer to celebrate Eid last month, he urged him to do more to tackle Islamophobia. The prime minister agreed. ‘There’s certainly stuff online which I think needs tackling more robustly than it is at the moment,’ he said. 

The dangers of this sort of creeping censorship have been pointed out by respected journalists for years. In 2009, for instance, Christopher Hitchens gave a speech that was remarkably prescient:

The next thing [is] you’ll be told you can’t complain because you’re Islamophobic. The term is already being introduced into the culture as if it was an accusation of race hatred, for example, or bigotry, whereas it’s only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion.

While we condemn the rioters, prosecute the offenders, and restore the safety and security of the affected communities, we also need to have a serious conversation about why there was such widespread resentment in the first place and the best ways to address people’s legitimate complaints. The breakdown in the social cohesion and coexistence of distinct ethnic communities is the root cause of this communal violence. In the past two years alone, over a million legal immigrants have arrived in Britain each year, most of them from non-European countries. This has resulted in major demographic changes. Between 2001 and 2021, for example, white ethnic Brits decreased as a proportion of the population by 13.1%—from 87.5% to 74.4%.  

Multiculturalism has failed. This is not a controversial statement. Numerous problems have arisen as a result of the mass immigration of individuals who reject Western liberal democracy and our shared, innate sense of civic virtues. Even though white Britons commit many serious crimes, the sharp rise in sectarian violence, interethnic conflicts on the streets of Leicester, the child grooming gang scandal, and the competition for scarce resources have caused many to question the state’s immigration policies. Laws protecting minorities from hate speech and increased censorship only serve to reinforce the perception that white British people are not being heard. 

While the media has pushed the narrative that we are a nation beset with racists and fascists, it is the law-abiding majority who have legitimate reason to feel frustrated—as evidenced by the protestors who yelled ‘save our kids’. If we don’t address some serious questions about immigration, violence, and why the police appear to treat some people from minority backgrounds differently, these riots will happen again and again. To combat this, we need more, not less speech. 

Related reading

The far right and ex-Muslims: ‘The enemy of my enemy is not my friend’, by Sara Al-Ruqaishi

Reflections on the far right riots: a predictable wave of violence, by Khadija Khan

Featured image: Laurie Noble. CC BY 3.0.

The post Free speech and the ‘Farage riots’ appeared first on The Freethinker.

Although elaborate hate speech laws can make it extremely difficult, we have the right to freedom of expression in Britain. Generally speaking, musicians are free to express their opinions. Morrissey can voice his opposition to mass immigration and concerns about the erosion of English identity while Stormzy can take the stage at Glastonbury and get his audience of over 200,000 people to yell ‘fuck the government’, both with impunity. The ability of artists to hold those in positions of power accountable is a fundamental civil liberty that ensures the maintenance of political equilibrium in a liberal democracy.

While our system has many flaws—cough, Scotland—we have never executed a musician for speaking their mind, as far as I can recall. And yet the Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi must face the horrifying reality of that exact situation. Salehi was given a death sentence in April this year after the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Isfahan accused him of ‘waging war against god’.

Salehi is a vocal opponent of the Islamic Republic. The right to free speech is guaranteed to well-known socially conscious rappers in the West, such as Talib Kweli and Immortal Technique, but Salehi was not accorded the same protection to express himself. In Iran, hip-hop is strictly forbidden. Artists typically use pseudonyms to get around the regime; Salehi, on the other hand, has always gone by his real name. 

The 33-year-old is at the forefront of socially conscious hip-hop in Iran and was a pioneer of the Rap-e Farsi (Persian-language rap) movement. His lyrics advocate for greater rights for women and workers while addressing injustice and inequality. In tracks like ‘Pomegranate’, he sings ‘Human (life) is cheap, the labourer is a pomegranate, Iran is a wealthy, fertile land,’ alluding to workers as nothing more than fruit to be squeezed. However, the majority of his vitriol is aimed at the Islamic Republic itself. In his most well-known song, ‘Soorakh Moosh’ (‘Rat Hole’), he condemns all those who support the corrupt regime and turn a blind eye to oppression and injustice. 

It was songs like this that initially drew the state’s attention to him. Iran’s security forces detained Salehi on September 13 2021 and accused him of ‘insulting the Supreme Leader’ and ‘propaganda against the regime’. He was granted a six-month suspended sentence and released from prison after serving more than a week. 

Salehi’s case serves as a microcosm of the fractures that exist in Iranian society more than 40 years after the revolution of 1979. Since the overthrow of the Shah, the country has been ruled as an Islamic republic, with women required to cover their hair in strict compliance with Islamic modesty laws. The ageing clerical elite—Ayatollah Khamenei is 85— is at variance with the majority of its citizens, who were born after the revolution. Many of them are concerned with personal freedoms and financial security—50% of Iranians are living in absolute poverty—rather than religious purity. Salehi speaks for a generation of disillusioned youth. 

His activism extends beyond words: he has supported a number of social causes, most notably the Woman, Life, Freedom movement and the September 2022 protests, which were sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was detained by the police after she was accused of wearing an ‘improper’ hijab. Subsequent anti-hijab demonstrations, which saw thousands of people take to the streets calling for women’s rights and the dissolution of the Islamic Republic, with many of them burning hijabs, spread across the country and resulted in over 22,000 arrests and over 530 deaths.

To support the women-led uprising, Salehi released two songs. ‘Battlefield’, which was released in early October 2022, contains the lyrics, ‘Woman, life, freedom, we will fight to the death/ Shoulder to shoulder like a defensive wall/ I believe in solidarity like divine faith/…We are thirsty for freedom’. A few weeks later, he released a song containing the lines, ‘44 years of your government, it is the year of failure/… Someone’s crime was dancing with her hair in the wind / Someone’s crime was that he or she was brave and criticised [the government]’.

On October 30, 2022, Salehi was detained once more and charged with spreading ‘propagandistic activity against the government’. He received a prison sentence of six years and three months in July 2023. The Supreme Court granted him bail in November after he had been imprisoned for more than a year, including 252 days in solitary confinement. When he was free, he posted a video to his official YouTube account from outside the jail where he had been held, claiming he had been tortured—having his arms and legs broken and given shots of adrenaline to keep him awake. He was swiftly reimprisoned.

For the crime of talking, or, in the words of the Isfahan court, ‘spreading corruption on earth’, Salehi was sentenced to death on 24 April 2024. As of writing, the case is awaiting appeal.

This is not an isolated case. Saman Yasin is another musician who suffered a similar fate. The Supreme Court commuted the Kurdish rapper’s death sentence, which had been imposed after his arrest during the 2022 protests, to five years in prison. Yasin has allegedly been tortured and prohibited from interacting with others.

Under the iron fist of Khamenei, Iran crushes dissent. Amnesty International reports that 853 people were executed in Iran in 2023—the highest number since 2015 and a 48% increase from the year before. 74% of executions reported globally in 2023 occurred in the Islamic Republic. 

Women who violate the dress code have also been severely punished. Ironically, a few weeks prior to World Hijab Day this year, an Iranian woman and activist by the name of Roya Heshmati was detained for 11 days, fined $300, and whipped 74 times after she was caught on social media without a headscarf. Salehi is right to use his platform to expose the violent misogyny that permeates totalitarian Islamic societies like Iran. The hijab is, quite simply, a symbol of oppression, not liberation, whatever some in the West might think. 

Freedom of expression is essential for musicians. All artists must be free to question, challenge, and criticise authority. The tyrant’s empire is built on a foundation of censorship. Words mean little when no one can hear them. Salehi’s three million Instagram followers have contributed to the attention his case has received in the West. While we can all lament the loss of meaningful conversation on social media, we cannot deny its power to instantly connect millions of people. 

Music is a powerful medium for telling stories. And we can spread that message by using the internet. A new wave of youthful, politically engaged musicians is emerging thanks to social media, as shown by Salehi and many others. See also the rise of dissident rappers in Russia such as Oxxxymiron and FACE—the latter of whom Putin has designated as a foreign agent. 

Nobody should ever be sentenced to death or even arrested for speaking their mind. Those who foolishly believe they can use violence to counter the pen do so because they understand that most people will be intimidated into silence. His extraordinary bravery and conviction bear witness to the principles that Salehi has upheld throughout his life. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes, ‘Courage is the only virtue you cannot fake.’ 

While we in the West take the right to free speech for granted, we should praise courageous people like Saman Yasin and Toomaj Salehi—people who are prepared to risk their lives in order to challenge the hegemony of the Ayatollah and his despotic, theocratic regime. 

Related reading

The ‘Women’s Revolution’: from two activists in Iran, by Rastine Mortad and Sadaf Sepiddasht

The need for a new Enlightenment, by Christopher Hitchens

The hijab is the wrong symbol to represent women, by Khadija Khan

Image of the week: celebrating the death of Ebrahim Raisi, the Butcher of Tehran, by Daniel James Sharp

Secularism is a feminist issue, by Megan Manson

Faith Watch, November 2023, by Daniel James Sharp

When does a religious ideology become a political one? The case of Islam, by Niko Alm

‘The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech’ – interview with Maryam Namazie, by Emma Park

Religion and the Arab-Israeli conflict, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

‘Nature is super enough, thank you very much!’: interview with Frank Turner, by Daniel James Sharp

The rhythm of Tom Paine’s bones, by Eoin Carter

Consciousness, free will and meaning in a Darwinian universe: interview with Daniel C. Dennett, by Daniel James Sharp

Celebrating Eliza Flower: an unconventional woman, by Frances Lynch

The post Rap versus theocracy: Toomaj Salehi and the fight for a free Iran appeared first on The Freethinker.

If the Scottish Government is to be believed, a roving band of bigoted individuals is attacking its citizens. In an attempt to deprogram the hate-filled hoi polloi from their rabid bigotry, the Hate Monster has been let loose. In an 80-second video, a character eerily reminiscent of Captain Caveman grows larger, fuelled by hate: ‘When ye feel angry; he’ll be there, feeding aff they emotions. Getting bigger and bigger, till he’s weighing ye doon.’ Since this online periodical’s editor is Scottish, I made sure to quote the proper vernacular to avoid committing a hate crime. [Och aye! Very wise! – Ed.]

Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act went into effect on 1 April. It was created to consolidate existing hate crime legislation and safeguard minorities who were thought to be particularly vulnerable. In 2020, after the George Floyd murder, then-Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf stated that ‘We cannot, and will not, tolerate hate crime, prejudice or discrimination of any kind.’ This came just a couple of months after he introduced the Hate Crime Bill in the Scottish Parliament. More recently, the First Minister has called for a ‘zero-tolerance approach to hatred.’ In addition to a long list of protected characteristics, including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity, the Act establishes a new offence of ‘stirring up hatred’.

According to Police Scotland, a hate crime is defined as ‘Any crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated (wholly or partly) by malice or ill will towards a social group.’ Put another way, it is a perception-based crime: the alleged victim’s—or witnesses’—subjective assessment alone is sufficient to classify an incident as a hate crime, without the need for any additional evidence. 

The Act’s defenders contend that this is an incorrect interpretation of the law. They argue that it is necessary for a ‘reasonable person’ to agree that an incident is threatening or abusive enough to constitute a hate crime. But there were already laws pertaining to death threats and every liberal democracy is based on laws that protect people from physical harm. So what of abuse? Words are not violence. This law conflates physical and verbal abuse. When someone verbally attacks you, the worst you will suffer is a bruised ego. It does not put a restriction on your freedom. 

And what of the effects on the alleged transgressors? You might be recorded as having participated in a non-crime hate incident (NCHI), even if you have not broken the law. If this occurs, you are unlikely to be informed, but it could become apparent when your employer conducts a disclosure check on you. Although NCHIs were not introduced as part of the new Hate Crime Act, it is a reasonable suspicion that more of them will be recorded now. The Court of Appeal (England and Wales) declared in 2021 that the recording of NCHIs as it had been done until then was unlawful. Despite this, police in England and Wales persisted, issuing 6,489 of them between June and November of last year, many of which involved ‘petty rows’. The Scottish police are merely doing the same.

It appears that elite paranoia about the general population is the motivation behind the Hate Crime Act. Hundreds of sites have been made available by Police Scotland for the public to report hate crimes, which range from a Glaswegian sex shop to a mushroom farm in North Berwick. You can visit one of these snitching centres located across the length and breadth of the nation and submit an anonymous report about someone. What could possibly go wrong?

If Harold Wilson’s oft-quoted observation that ‘a week is a long time in politics’ is correct, then the Hate Crime Act’s first one has been an unmitigated disaster. In the seven days since the Act’s enactment, Police Scotland logged over 6,000 reports. The police are wasting valuable resources on overtime due to the unceasing influx of incidents, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, while actual crimes like burglary remain unsolved. 

Perhaps the worst aspect of the Act is that the dwelling defence has been removed, so people now face the possibility of prosecution for remarks they make while at home. Fines and jail terms of up to seven years are among the available forms of punishment.

And the Act is a hostage to the law of unintended consequences. As a senior Scottish police officer said, people might ‘use the legislation to score points against people who sit on the other side of a particularly controversial debate’. Thus, police might be forced to adjudicate between warring parties seeking revenge.

Meanwhile, Thomas Ross KC suggested that football fans might report rival supporters using the Act. Given the fierce rivalry and sectarian history of Old Firm football, this could prove a real headache for the police. Indeed, a number of reports regarding hate crimes were made after a match on 7 April according to The Times, including from people who overheard Rangers fans’ singing on the TV and radio, though the precise figure has not been verified. 

Like all laws that aim to outlaw offence, this one appears to have been thrown together on the fly. The best example of the ad hoc nature of the Act was provided by Siobhan Brown, the Minister for Victims and Community Safety, who stated that individuals may be subject to investigation if they misgender someone. J.K. Rowling chose to test the new law on April Fool’s Day, which, ironically, was also the day the Act went into effect. The gender critical feminist posted on Twitter/X about a number of men convicted of sex crimes now identifying as women. She said, ‘If what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.’

Thankfully, the police declared that the Harry Potter author’s tweets were not criminal. Additionally, they ignored reports against Humza Yousaf, who became a target for his now-infamous speech in 2020 in which he effectively criticised Scotland for being too white. Naturally, this has led to accusations that the police are selectively enforcing the new law. Take the Scottish Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser, who had an NCHI recorded against him for tweeting that identifying as non-binary was like identifying as a cat. Fraser now intends to challenge this in court. 

I write a lot about culture, so let me share a humorous example that encapsulates our submission to political correctness. Scot Squad was a Scottish mockumentary series about a fictional police force, and one episode was incredibly prescient. In it, the chief repeatedly digs himself into a bigger hole in an effort to make up for a relatively trivial comment. Feeling he is always offending someone, his long apology never ends. 

A recent poll indicates that 45% of Scots support the repeal of the law, while 21% support it. This is a heartening indication that the spirit of liberty in Scotland is not dead yet. The more people learn about it, the more resistance they seem to be putting up. We owe a debt of gratitude to J.K. Rowling for making the general public aware of the ridiculousness of this law. Ironically, it took a woman with a big set of balls to show up this illiberal legislation.

Further reading

From Satan to the Hate Monster, by Emma Park

Faith Watch, March 2024, by Daniel James Sharp

The return of blasphemy in Ireland, by Noel Yaxley

The post Is the spirit of liberty dead in Scotland? appeared first on The Freethinker.

On 26 October 2018, Ireland voted to remove the archaic criminal law of blasphemy from its constitution. Almost one million people (64.85 per cent of participants) voted, in what Taoiseach Leo Varadkar called a ‘quiet revolution’, to remove the word ‘blasphemous’ from article 40.6.1.i of the Constitution. This had previously stated that ‘the publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.’

The bill to remove blasphemy was signed into law by the president later that year. However, just three years later, the Irish government are introducing a new, even more authoritarian bill that will severely limit free speech, and has the potential to criminalise modern blasphemers. Barring amendment or rejection, this bill is set to become enshrined in Irish law.

Currently being debated in the Seanad, the upper house of the Irish parliament, the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 would update and expand Ireland’s hate speech laws to include incitement to violence or hatred against persons or groups on the basis of protected characteristics, including religion, race, disability and gender. 

The bill contains many provisions that will make the average liberal or civil libertarian’s blood run cold. Under this bill, existing crimes such as assault and vandalism could lead to longer prison sentences if hatred is found to be the motive. According to Section 7, the mere possession of material that the state deems ‘hateful’ could result in citizens being sent to prison for up to five years if their actions are held to be ‘likely to incite violence or hatred’ against a person with protected characteristics. Should the bill it find its way onto the statute books, then, despite the government’s insistence that it includes a provision to ‘protect genuine freedom of expression’, there is little doubt that Ireland would become the ignominious holder of one of the most comprehensive ‘hate speech’ laws, if not the most totalitarian, in Western Europe. 

In April, the bill passed through the Dáil (Ireland’s equivalent of the House of Commons) relatively unscathed. Only 14 of the 160 Dáil members voted against the proposed amendments. Yet its provisions are comprehensive and authoritarian.

The Justice Minister Helen McEntee, who was responsible for the bill, argued that it was necessary in order to discourage the targeting of those with protected characteristics. Her comments were echoed by Pauline O’Reilly, a senator of the Green Party, who told the Seanad that restrictions on free speech were necessary to protect vulnerable people from ‘such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace’. The senator is also reported as saying, using highly emotive language, that ‘the dirty, filthy underbelly of hatred in Irish society’ necessitates ‘the restriction of freedom’.

On the face of it, these proposals may sound like a good idea. Few would oppose laws that protect the rights of individuals, especially if the individual belongs to a persecuted or marginalised group. No ordinary, sensible person would tolerate despicable acts such as racist or misogynistic violence. 

Except that words are not violence. Verbal abuse is not the same as physical abuse. According to those who support hate speech legislation, living in fear of being ‘attacked verbally’ is a restriction on one’s freedom. A rhetorical question commonly deployed by opponents of free speech in this debate is, ‘why is it acceptable to protect freedom of speech for everyone when doing so harms the right of some people, in particular, those with protected characteristics, to live in peace?’ The question is what conclusion should follow from this. Those who support the severe limitations on free speech proposed by the bill would say that it is justified by its alleged ability to protect vulnerable people’s right to ‘live in peace’. But the alternative conclusion would be that everyone has to accept a certain amount of rough-and-tumble, and that no one’s ideas are above criticism. Sometimes, words can even act as a bulwark against physical violence – against which every liberal democracy has numerous laws to protect people.

Clarification is essential when it comes to the application of laws, especially those relating to civil liberties. But tyranny likes grey areas. The bill’s current definition of hatred (clause 2(1)) is vague and tautological:

‘“Hatred” means hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics or any one of those characteristics.’

This non-definition – ‘“hatred” means hatred against’ – led Thomas Pringle, the Independent TD (MP) for Donegal, to criticise the bill. He noted in a debate in the Select Committee on Justice that one ‘remarkable’ feature of the bill was that ‘hate is not defined in it’. Fundamentally, it is difficult to see how ‘hatred’ or ‘hate speech’, where it does not cross the line into existing criminal offences, such as harassment, libel, death threats or incitement to violence, could really mean anything more than ‘offensiveness’. But whatever the Merseyside police or hardline progressives might think, the idea that being offensive might be worthy of criminalisation is well beyond the current laws of either England or Ireland, and would be an extraordinarily illiberal step. 

Failure to define a crime can potentially lead to anyone being found guilty. When such vague definitions serve as the basis for a conviction, courts often have to base their sentence not only on a person’s actions but also on their beliefs. 

Consider the idea brought forward in the UK by Stella Creasy to make misogyny a ‘hate crime’. For several years the Labour MP has sought to make being motivated by misogyny an aggravating factor in criminal sentencing—with a potential prison sentence of up to seven years if it was determined that the crime was committed by someone with a hatred of women. We already have laws that deal with the most serious of misogynistic crimes, such as sexual assault and domestic abuse. Yet it is strange to think that a violent crime against a woman where the defendant was not motivated by misogyny should automatically be punished less severely than one where he or she was so motivated. If the harm done to the victim is the same in each case, there are real concerns with arguing that the law should categorise specific kinds of beliefs, when they motivate a crime, as making that crime liable to more severe punishment than it would be, had the defendant not been motivated by those kinds of beliefs.

McEntee and other supporters of the bill claim it is necessary to protect minority groups from actual verbal abuse. However a provision deeply buried in the bill indicates that its effects would reach much farther than that. Under Section 10 of the bill, the preparation or possession of material ‘likely to incite violence or hatred’ against people on account of their protected characteristics is a criminal offence punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment, when such preparation or possession is ‘with a view to the material being communicated to the public or a section of the public, whether by [the defendant] or another person’, and ‘with intent’ to incite hatred or violence or ‘being reckless’ as to whether they are incited.  In other words, if you privately possess material that might incite, not even violence, but the more nebulous response of hatred, and you are ‘reckless’ about whether hatred is incited if the material is shared publicly, then you could be guilty of a criminal offence – regardless of whether the material actually results in anyone’s being abused.

An even more chilling provision is then introduced (clause 10(3)): where the defendant is found to have possessed such material, and ‘it is reasonable to assume that the material was not intended for [his or her] personal use’, it is to be presumed ‘that the material [is] not intended for personal use’ unless he or she can prove otherwise. Thus, if the defendant is found to possess material likely to incite hatred, then, if it is reasonable to assume it was not for personal use, then they would be required to prove that it was, in order to escape conviction. In other words, this section, a little over 30 words long, effectively abolishes the presumption of innocence. The burden of proof will shift from the prosecutor to the defendant, on the grounds not of a proved intention, but of what it is ‘reasonable’ to assume the intention was.

As the ‘possession’ clause suggests, this bill, like other hate-speech laws around the world, such as Scotland’s infamous Hate Crime and Public Order Act, does not seek to protect vulnerable people from abstract definitions of hate, but rather is intended to limit what you can say or write. As such, it will curtail legitimate debate and pose a serious threat to free expression. Anything that prevents people from freely holding beliefs not sanctioned by the state, or viewed by the law as ‘dangerous’, is a threat to a free and liberal society. The idea of an informed citizenship is anathema to authoritarians.

As noble as they sound, laws against hate speech do not promote equality. They give victims an artificial sense of justice, but in reality, they do little to address the issues that have led to the supposed crime in the first place. If Irish lawmakers want to reduce prejudice against protected characteristics, they must abandon this bill and focus on education. Knowledge increases tolerance and acceptance. The irony is that this can only be achieved through the free exchange of ideas – which is exactly what this law is intended to prevent.

In The Gulag Archipelago (1973), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn points out that people are unaware that they are complicit in acts of wrongdoing because dogmatic adherence to an ideology seems to justify their actions. In the case of Ireland, an ideology of identity that promises to protect minority groups from offence is allowing its adherents to hide their illiberal behaviour under the guise of moral righteousness. 

If Ireland is to remain a free country, it is essential that this bill be rejected in its entirety. A copy of Solzhenitsyn’s book should be left on the desk of every member of parliament. 

For a bibliography of our articles on free speech and free thought, see: Free Speech in the Freethinker.

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The post The return of blasphemy in Ireland appeared first on The Freethinker.

The trial of Ashfaq Masih will mean little to people in Britain today. It could be suggested that it means even less in Pakistan, where his alleged crime took place. Masih was a Pentecostal Christian who owned a bicycle repair shop in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province in eastern Pakistan. In 2017, he was arrested following an oral disagreement with a Muslim customer after the latter refused to pay his bill. The man in question, Muhammad Irfan, told Masih not to charge him for the repair to his bicycle as he was a devout Muslim. Masih refused, supposedly telling Irfan that Christ was the true prophet. His lawyer, Riaz Anjum, told Morning Star News, ‘Masih rejected his request, saying he only followed Jesus and wasn’t interested in Irfan’s religious statutes as a Muslim.’ The police charged the 31-year-old with disrespecting the prophet Mohammed. He was to spend the next five years in prison awaiting trial.

When he appeared in court, Masih testified that he had been deceived by the shop owner, Muhammad Ashfaq, and the businessman Muhammad Naveed, who owned a nearby bicycle repair shop. Masih told the court in Lahore that Naveed was jealous of his success and had conspired with Ashfaq to destroy his business. The case was riddled with errors. Irfan, who was the primary witness, failed to show up to court to testify, while according to Masih’s lawyer, statements from other witnesses ‘were contradictory’.

Despite a clear lack of evidence against him, Judge Khalid Wazir sentenced the now 36-year-old to death. On July 4, 2022, Masih was sentenced to death by hanging.*

The tragic case of Masih is no outlier. As reported in Morning Star News, between October 2020 and September 2021, 620 people were murdered in Pakistan for their beliefs. The country ranks second behind Nigeria for the number of Christians killed for their religion. 

Blasphemy, defined as speaking or acting in a way that is critical of or offensive to God, is still prevalent in four out of ten countries in the world. According to an analysis conducted by the Pew Research Centre, of the 198 countries and territories they studied, 79 criminalised blasphemy. Among these, penalties ranged from fines to prison sentences and public lashings.

While this research found blasphemy laws on the statute books on all five continents, the region where these laws were most commonly located was the Middle East and Africa, where 90 percent of the 20 countries studied had laws criminalising blasphemy. It is here that the penalties for blasphemy carry the severest punishments. It is predominantly countries in this region—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia—that carry the death sentence for blasphemy. 

Britain has officially abolished blasphemy laws—except, it seems, as far as concerns one religion, Islam. I found myself thinking about Masih recently as details of an incident at Wakefield began to emerge. In February, four boys were suspended from Kettlethorpe High School after slightly damaging a copy of the Quran. Rumours were spread—notably by the Labour councillor Usman Ali—that the holy book had been ‘desecrated’. In truth, the book was lightly scuffed, suffering minor damage to the front cover. Still, to placate a vocal minority of Muslim reactionaries, the police were called, and it was recorded as a non-crime hate incident. The 14-year-old autistic boy who had brought it into the West Yorkshire school on a dare was deluged with death threats. It led to his mother effectively begging the local mosque for forgiveness; to complete this shameful act of submission, she was required to cover her hair.   

Just a few miles away from Kettlethorpe is another West Yorkshire school, Batley Grammar, the scene of another moral panic over blasphemy two years ago. It was here that a religious studies teacher was forced to go into hiding after showing his students cartoons of Mohammed during a class about free speech. Once again, religious fundamentalists got involved and showed up outside the school’s gates, causing it to shut down for days. A local Islamic charity, Purpose of Life, published his name online. The Yorkshire Examiner reported that the teacher sought police protection after receiving numerous death threats. To this day, the teacher is said to be in hiding. 

In modern Western society, no one should be prosecuted for blasphemy. Using the threat of imprisonment or death to criticise an idea is the very definition of tyranny. This archaic legislation is like something out of medieval times—or the Old Testament, as it is appropriately called. Unfortunately, incidents like Wakefield are not a new phenomenon. Britain has been heading in an illiberal direction for years. 

The seeds of surrender to Islamist intolerance were first sown 30 years ago with the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses. The book’s perceived blasphemy led Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa, effectively condemning the author to death, in 1989; last summer, a New York assailant came disturbingly close to claiming the bounty set on Rushdie’s head. It is worth recalling that the first protest against The Satanic Verses happened not in the streets of Peshawar or across the Middle East, but in Bolton on 2nd December 1988. 

Incidents like this, with their associated threats of violence, arguably show that Islam must be treated differently from other religions. If the UK yields to the demands of religious extremists, it will be sanctioning the spread of a de facto blasphemy law. Freedom of expression and religion are essential in a free and liberal society. The freedom to criticise, question, mock and insult a religion is as important as the freedom of its adherents to practise it. 

Offence can act as a catalyst for social change. In 1976, Denis Lemon, the editor of Gay News, was put on trial for blasphemy for publishing a homoerotic poem about the death of Jesus Christ. The poem by James Kirkup, The Love that Dares To Speak its Name, was included in issue 96 of Gay News and depicted a Roman centurion fantasising about having sex with Christ’s crucified body. Lemon’s subsequent conviction started a debate about blasphemy laws, eventually leading to their abolition in 2008 and expanding freedom of speech for all of us.  

In contrast, since the Masih case, Pakistan has legislated for even stricter controls on blasphemy laws. In January, its National Assembly passed the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act 2023, increasing the power of the state to impose even more draconian punishments and widening the definition of blasphemy to include insulting figures connected to Mohammed. 

Time will tell if Pakistan will row back on its antiquated constitution. In the meantime, there is much to be done in Britain. Much of the blame has to lie with the moral cowardice of modern-day progressives, who are unwilling to confront religious authoritarianism and defend the values that define a liberal democratic country such as this one. Failure to address this uncomfortable issue has meant that it has been outsourced to the far right. It is a sad indictment of a country in decline.

Worse, the enforcement of blasphemy laws in the UK is a stain on the vast majority of Muslims living here, who are peaceful, law-abiding citizens. Blasphemy laws, de facto or otherwise, infantilise Muslims by robbing them of their agency. It implies they require special rules and regulations to protect their feelings, making them seem incapable of living in a society that upholds liberal values. 

It has been over one hundred years since the death of John William Gott, the last individual imprisoned in Britain for the crime of blasphemy. Yet through our failure to act and speak up in defence of freedom of speech, it may not be long until someone else is put in prison for this ‘crime’. Rights are universal and non-negotiable; you cannot opt out of them. Offence must not be a motivating factor in what people can and cannot say. There is no right to not be offended. These are lessons that contemporary progressives need to learn. Liberty is a wonderful thing, guaranteeing both secular and religious people the freedom to believe what they want. If we wish to live in a free society, we must be free to blaspheme. We owe it to the next generation to keep reinforcing these points. But most of all, we owe it to people like Asfaq Masih. 

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*Correction, 21/5/23: This article originally reported that Asfaq Masih had been ‘executed by hanging’. It has now been amended to state that he was ‘sentenced to death by hanging’. We have not been able to verify whether the sentence has yet been carried out (see further report here).

The post The perils of dropping a book appeared first on The Freethinker.

‘There’s more than one way to burn a book,’ wrote Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451. The case of Roald Dahl, one of the best-known children’s authors of the twentieth century, having a number of his classic books rewritten, is a powerful example of just how true that is today. 

The publisher hired a team to revise and remove all language they deemed offensive. This culminated in extensive alterations being made to some of the writer’s most famous books, as revealed in the report in the Telegraph which broke the story. Puffin brought in sensitivity readers to pore over Dahl’s words and make hundreds of changes to his work—in some cases, adding new passages to justify the author’s use of descriptive adjectives. For example, in The Witches, a paragraph explaining that witches are bald beneath their wigs now includes the line, ‘There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.’ In other cases, they are simply erased. The sentence, ‘There was something indecent about a bald woman,’ has been removed entirely. These are just two examples of the 59 edits made to just one of Dahl’s books. 

For almost seventy years, Dahl’s stories have enchanted generations of children. The characters he created are some of the most memorable in all of children’s literature. This is partly because he employed a simple literary device: ‘good’ = ‘handsome’, ‘bad’ = ‘ugly’. In his surreal, bifurcated world, Dahl equates physical and moral beauty, evoking the darkly comic tradition of such literary heavyweights as Evelyn Waugh. As Dahl writes in The Twits, ‘A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.’ Part of the pleasure in reading his books was in picturing the many imaginative ways in which he described dispatching the villains. The feeling evoked in reading about their downfall was a kind of gleeful sadness. And Dahl always made sure the good guys were the final winners. 

A majority of the edits have been made to Dahl’s descriptions of the characters’ physical appearance. The word ‘fat’ has been removed from every new edition. For example, Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now ‘enormous’, and Aunt Sponge in James and the Giant Peach is ‘tremendously flabby’ when she used to be ‘terrifically fat’. Meanwhile in The Twits—my all-time favourite childhood story—Mrs. Twit is no longer ‘ugly and beastly’, she is just ‘beastly’. 

Numerous references to gender are also gone. In The Witches, ‘chambermaid’ is now ‘cleaner’, while a woman’s likely profession is changed from ‘cashier’ to ‘top scientist’. It does not stop there. Any reference to race, indirect or otherwise, is gone. We now have a situation where a character turns ‘quite pale’ instead of ‘white’, while Mr. Twit’s monkeys no longer speak a ‘weird African language’, just an ‘African language’.

Dahl is no longer with us—he died in 1990. As such, he did not live to witness the impact that political correctness would have on literature. But novelists are not the only ones who have caught the attention of sensitivity readers. Fiction’s new moral guardians have now taken aim at the world of cookery books.

Last year, The Times reported that Jamie Oliver uses ‘teams of cultural appropriation specialists’ to review his recipes in an attempt to make sure they do not ‘offend anyone’. His ‘empire roast chicken’, which the chef said you can eat with your hands, along with his ‘punchy jerk rice’, were both previously deemed offensive to the Indian and Caribbean communities. In 2018, Labour MP Dawn Butler took to Twitter to voice her opinion. The former shadow equalities minister tweeted, ‘Your jerk rice is not ok. This appropriation from Jamaica needs to stop.’ Initially, the Essex-born chef did the right thing and defended himself, telling Hello! magazine (as reported in the Daily Mail) that ‘authenticity’ was a word that should be used ‘very carefully as most of the things we love…are not what we think they are.’ But the damage was done. By supposedly stealing other people’s cultural heritage for commercial gain, Oliver’s critics were basically accusing him of a bizarre form of culinary colonialism. 

I would argue that Oliver uses ‘cultural appropriation specialists’ nowadays in order to be financially successful. Shielding your work from offence is the latest way to signal your right-on credentials. And it is a big business. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) managers command six figure salaries. Get their approval, and the world is yours – they will even open the door for you. Cookery books are one of the most difficult industries to break into in the publishing world. In 2020, 5,000 cookbooks were published; of these, only one-tenth, (556) sold over 100 copies. The ‘Naked Chef’ has sold more than 48 million books. After his chain of Italian restaurants collapsed, Oliver would seem to be trying to protect his empire. (No chicken pun, I promise). 

With the possible exception of ‘cultural appropriation’, there is no phrase more idiotic in the politically correct lexicon than ‘lived experience’. Yet within just a few years, this meaningless shibboleth has come to dominate the world of literature. 

In recent years, sensitivity readers have become the most talked-about people in publishing. Essentially, freelance copy editors are hired by publishers to review new manuscripts in an attempt to ‘cancel-proof’ new works of literature. They are paid to read books that portray characters that exist outside the ‘lived experience’ of the author. For example, the white Canadian author Paul Carlucci had a publishing deal fall through after a sensitivity reader made a series of objections to his portrayal of an Indigenous character from the Canadian Odawa nation. Carlucci felt that the increasing list of objections would have ruined the character development and narrative flow of the novel, telling The Sunday Times, ‘I got their notes—and they were ridiculous… If I’d followed this advice I would have portrayed an 1830s Canada that is more racially just than it is today. It would have been sanitised.’

Sensitivity readers are a modern version of a centuries-old problem. These self-appointed censors are not a new phenomenon. Literature has had a long and bloody relationship with the written word.  

When William Caxton introduced the printing press to England in 1476, it revolutionised the world of literature. It helped spread ideas and opinions wider and faster than ever before. The response from successive English monarchs was to control it. Long before Orwell, they realised that he who controls language has power. Henry VIII established Crown licensing of the press in 1529. It meant nothing could be published without the express permission of the Star Chamber—a network of judges and privy councillors. Anything critical of the Crown or the Church could be branded treason or seditious libel.

Fifty years after Caxton, William Tyndale printed an English version of the New Testament in Germany. When he brought it to England in 1526, it was immediately proscribed. Ten years later, he had not yet finished his translation of the Old Testament when he was captured in Antwerp, before being tried, strangled and burnt at the stake for the crime of heresy. Yet just three years later, Henry VIII split from Rome and founded the Church of England, thereby giving his approval for an English text.

In 1663, John Twyn was hanged, drawn and quartered at what is now Marble Arch for printing—not writing—a book justifying people’s right to rebel against injustice. The system of Crown licensing finally ended in 1695. All it took were the deaths of a few revolutionaries and a passionate plea from John Milton, set against the backdrop of a protracted civil war. Give me liberty or give me death!

As history has shown, our relationship with the state has often been bloody, especially when we have fought so hard for our civil liberties. But it is not just the state that imposes top-down collective control over our right to speak freely. Censorship can often come from other, less abstract relationships much closer to home. A lighter touch was required. Think less iron fist, more velvet glove. 

When we reach the 18th century, we enter a new, less violent era of censorship. In 1779, Frances Burney wrote a play called The Witlings. The comedy satirised modern society. Despite this, it was not performed or printed for almost two hundred years. It was censored and suppressed by what she called her ‘two daddies’, her father, Dr Charles Burney, and her ‘elderly friend and literary censor’, Samuel Crisp. Censorship had found a new home in Georgian high society. 

Henrietta (known as Harriet) and Thomas Bowdler found themselves, somewhat ironically, contributing to the English language when they edited The Family Shakespeare in 1807. They went through some twenty works of the Bard and removed all ‘words and expressions…which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.’ The practice became so widespread that it led to the creation of a new verb: ‘bowdlerise’, that is, to alter and remove offensive language from a literary work – thereby reducing its creative impact. 

As censorship became acceptable among the upper middle classes, it also increased in frequency. It was still going strong last century; James Joyce’s Ulysses, which turned 100 last month, was banned in the United States before Joyce finished writing it. Meanwhile, in 1960, the Old Bailey—a court normally reserved for the most serious cases of murder and violence—found itself presiding over the ultimate crime of words: giving offence. Penguin Books was put on trial for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and was eventually acquitted. Yet there is a tragic irony to all this. Puffin is a subsidiary of Penguin Books. Some sixty years after the Lady Chatterley debacle, Puffin is now doing a similar thing to Roald Dahl – proving that we have not learned anything from history. 

Contrary to popular opinion, Dahl has not been ‘cancelled’: the original text will continue to be published, after a climb-down by Puffin. But that misses the point. The fact that the publisher at first simply tried to replace the originals, and the public outcry against this move, shows how much we take freedom of expression for granted. The censorship of all art, literature, painting and music is an attempt to eradicate the past and impose a single, politically driven narrative on history. Worse, giving someone permission to do this is nothing short of cultural vandalism. It shows a profound ignorance of history and a tragic misunderstanding of liberty that fewer and fewer of us seem to share. Such ignorance is what led to Edward Colston’s statue being tipped into Bristol harbour. 

There are signs of a pushback. Later this year, Carlucci’s novel will be published by Swift Press, a new, independent publisher specialising in cancelled authors and books that other publishers will not touch. Swift Press sold 100,000 books within the first nine months of 2021. Scrolling through its list of authors, one notable name stands out: Kate Clanchy. Sensitivity readers censored her Orwell prize-winning memoir, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me. Despite the prize, the book caused controversy after critics accused her of using racial stereotypes and ableist language. She eventually parted company with her original publisher, Picador, and had the book reissued by Swift.

Roald Dahl was a wonderful writer whose books have now sold in excess of 250 million copies worldwide. Children love them because they are drawn to the surreal and the grotesque. For them, to see authoritarian adults in all their physical and moral hideousness can have a certain rebellious charm. Dahl’s writing can be a means of catharsis.

Children quickly learn the difference between literal and other interpretations of words. As such, Puffin’s attempted censorship is an insult to both their creativity and sophistication. With these edits, children are being taught not to see the ugliness, the strangeness and sometimes even the horror of the world around them – to pretend it does not exist. That is a story truly more sinister than anything Dahl could create. 

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