So anyway, the government are now telling us that insulting anybody at all in the privacy of your own meeting-place should be made a criminal offense. Yah. The reason? Some BNP leaders got cleared of incitement of hatred. Well of course they did! I mean, all they said was that Islam is evil, or words to that effect. It's not like they actually encouraged members to go out and kill all the muslims or anything. 'least not on this occasion, and the joy of the court system is that your past actions must not be taken into account. Yessss.
Anyway, it raises questions. I mean, if we're not allowed to say anything bad about a belief system because it might offend folk, we're basically losing civil rights. There's a reason that I'm more than happy to sonstantly make posts that could be reas as an attack on [insert group here], and that's becasue of freedom of speech. The fact that I accept they have the right to make comments about my beliefs. And that's important.
Of course, if the government get their way that won't be allowed. Great shame.
Of course, this is nothing new. Anyone remember the Mohammed cartoons? Well for anyone that doesn't, they were basically some harmless pictures of the prophet Mohammed. Onl;y really offensive one had a bomb on his turban, which was actually pretty clever. It's asking the question of whether muslims are terrorists, or wether terrorists use Islam as an excuse, evidently. Or maybe it was jsut designed to be inflamatory. Regardless, there was some slight overkill in the reaction from the Islamic community. And we're talking bombings of Danish embassys, death-threats to all who published the things, national newspapers refusing to make copies in case someone killed them (even private eye settled for just descriptions. Ridiculous.) So obviously I'm going to resist the temptation to post one here as an example. It'd just get pulled, anyway. Instead, here's a slightly less offensive cartoon that was published shortly after. gives a good idea of the problem, methinks.
So anyway. What's really happening now is taking it one step further: lets throw the danish cartoonist in prison becasue it happens to offend some overly-sensitive religeous types. I mean, really. Ever seen the pope urging the RC church to go murder TV comedians? Concidering there seems to be an insult hurled at Christianity on more or less every TV show these days you can't really argue he's not more justified than the folk upset over a few cartoons, surely? Hmm. Not seen the Dalai Llama launching a crusade against the Chinese lately, either. Well, well, well. Don't see Richard Dawkings being beheaded either.
So let me get this straight. There's only one major religeon likely to react to offensive comments, and thus we're going to throw folk in gaol for expressing opinions against religeous groups? I remind you that religeon is a choice. Nobody's forcing you to follow a certain belief system. It's not something that you're born into and stuck with through life, in the manner of, say, race. Racial hatred, now that's bad. That should be punishable. By all means, lock the BNP leaders up for life with their nazi-loving white-supremacy movement. But insulting a group that people choose to belong to? The BNP as champions of free speech. Not gonna see that happen very often.
Oh, what the hell. Here's a picture of Mohammed.
