seeing the funny side - let's have a heated debate!!

[JoolsTide]

\link{http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13262117,00.html\what do YOU think?}

Actually, the point is exactly that the current law does not protect everyone against "this sort of harassment". There is only the general law on assault, no law on harassment on ground of religion, unless you happen to be Jewish or Sikh, or the harassment is taking place at work.

DWC, do you know why Judaism and Sikhism are already covered? Is it anything to do with traditional dress (eg yarmulkes and turbans?) Just curious about this.
Nigel McCullough is exceptionally reasonable for a senior C of E cleric so I was interested to see that he really supports the intent of the proposed new legislation.

What's wrong with using the general law on harrassment? What's wrong with using the employment laws which already exist? And surely most Muslims would be covered indirectly by race relations laws?

I'd be interested to know why Sikhs and Jews are covered as well?

As for intent of proposed legislation, many a bad law has been made with good intent. Most reasonable people agree that most people shouldn't be persecuted because of their religion, but whether legislation like this is the right way to protect them, is the moot point.

Marina, I think, it is because the race relations law covers jewish and sikh people as they are both 'races' as well as religions. I could well be wrong though!

Sorry, Caligulights, I wasn't ignoring you - you posted whilst I was writing my answer to Marina.

Are Sikhs a race? I thought anyone could be a Sikh?

Same with Judaism, technically - although it's not a proselytising religion (now), you can convert. Would you be covered if you were a convert?

Oops, now I'm ignoring you, Sis - posts crossed!

Sis is right - Jews and Sikhs persuaded the courts that they belonged to a race (ie that they all came from a particular part very tiny of the world, viz what is now Israel and the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent). By contrast, and by way of example, Christians and Muslims come from all races and therefore are not protected by the laws on race discrimination. The people in Marina's example would not be protected from being beaten up on ground of being Muslims leaving their mosque unless the harassers happened to be their work colleagues going about their work duties at the time!!! The question whether religious persecution requires specialist protection, or can just be dealt with by general laws against any kind of persecution is really interesting. It is a bit like the question whether we need to have special laws protecting women against rape and / or domestic violence, or whether these crimes can just be dealt with under a general law of assault.

Isn't one of the reasons its being bought in because under existing law they couldn't prosecute Abu Hamza for his comments regarding the Jewish people, they could only charge him with public order offences which would be a minor charge? If so (and I'm really not sure about this) it seems that there is a loophole that needs closing, but they will have to word it very carefully.

At the moment the LibDems won't support it because of the wording.

I think I'm being a bit dim, but please put it down to stress at trying to imagine a world with no "Life of Brian"...Is there currently no legal way of dealing with people who roam the streets shouting "Kill all [insert religion of your choice here]s"?

If so, there should be some law against such behaviour, of course.

But there's a difference between satire/humour and incitement to racial/religous hatred, surely?

Maybe we should bring back the Spanish Inquisition....because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...oh dear, I think the dead parrot sketch might be next....

BFM, not being dim at all - there is no such law unless you are calling for Jews or Sikhs to be killed. There may be environmental laws about noise pollution which might cover it; also, depending on the particular facts, it might be covered by some drunkenness offences, or even riot provisions if there were lots and lots of them! I think that in practice it is not a big problem to distinguish between satire/humour and incitements to hatred. There are lots of laws protecting women against discrimination at work and against rape, but we still have plenty of dumb blonde jokes and so on going around.

Hmm, is there though, BFM? At what stage does making hostile jokes about a religion become incitement to hatred? If you look at some of the Dave Allen episodes now, some of his anti-catholic stuff, while hilarious, is viciously biting, and could easily have been banned by a cowardly or cowed BBC fighting for its licence fee. Same with some of Clive James' stuff about Ayatollah Khomeini - I can't remember the exact details of the sketches, but they could easily be construed as incitement to hatred if you wanted to construe it that way.

Does anyone know if WASP converts to Sikhism or Judaism are covered by the current race relations law then? (Just interested - there's probably never been a case, has there?)

Thanks for the info, DWC. Interesting point about laws against sexual discrimination coinciding with dumb blonde jokes.

I totally agree on all counts here.

I'm not very good at explaining myself because I don't know enough about the piece of legislation being opposed. But I think the problem is that it is very difficult to write down a piece of law. Lawyers win or lose cases on bits of specific writing, loopholes, precedents ("in the case of life of brian vs the NF mob, it was argued..." etc etc).

And then the media come along and dumb it down, and whip the public into a frenzy which, as has happened often of late IMO, has probably done more to cause racial tension than just leaving it all alone. Case in point "Banning Christmas in Birmingham" which caused me to hear SO many conversations which started to sound anti-"minority group" and which really bothered me, as I suspected that the "minority groups" in question had not even had anything to do with it in the first place, but was in fact a typical government/local government knee jerk reaction to "worrying" about things that were never going to happen.

It's all very tense at the moment isn't it?

Isn't (wasn't?) Dave Allen Catholic? Does that make a difference to his jokes about Catholicism? And I guess that some of those involved in "Life of Brian" were Christian.

Ah but he was lapsed. And as you know, the lapsed are the fiercest of all!

Totally agree with Mr Atkinson...