Juridics: Hate speech: British court permits hate speech based on religion but not on race

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An Associated Press article, "British far-right leader acquitted of race charges" (Nov10,2k6) significantly restricts race-hatred speech to exclude speech that could be defined as religion-hatred speech, which is apparently permissible even if counter-factual. AP:

LEEDS, England--The leader of Britain's far-right British National Party was acquitted Friday of stirring up racial hatred in a speech that labeled Islam a "wicked, vicious faith."

British National Party leader Nick Griffin was cleared by a jury at Leeds Crown Court in northern England. Another party member, Mark Collett, also was acquitted.

refWrite has maintained that Islam should not be treated as a unitary religious entity, but is subject to very deep variations among its believers and practioners that prohibit ethically generalizations of the entirety of the worldwide Islamic community of more than a billion souls.

In public discourse, political leaders especially should distinguish between Islam and its Islamofascist variants which interpret Islamic teachings based on texts many centuries old to advance religiopolitical ideologies that are not representative of Muslims, either in the UK or around the world.

Europe > Britain

Nick Griffin, British National Party leader should be condemned communally by all Christians in all walks of life, for not making the necessary distinction. However, British jurisprudence does leave him and others room to make false statements about the relgion of others, a point of law bearing several weity concerns in Britain and elsewhere. In regard to the law's distinction between racial and religious hate-speech, the British court may have advanced our ins+t; but in leaving its judgment open-ended on religion hate-speech, it redoubles upon Christians in Britain and everywhere to insist upon the difference between the vast majority of Muslims and that minority today within it who have taken a terrorist turn. Unfortunately, that minority does include some millions of people, a terrifyingly large number, yet the total population of Muslims worldwide is so large that Islamfascism cannot be said to typify Islam. Christians should strongly insist together how fallacious the ideology of Islamophobia is, as indicated by the speech habits of the leadership of the British National Party (which itself, thank God, is only a small fraction of the British non-Muslim population).

-- Owlb