by Andrew Gilligan, Spectator
The government’s new official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ is 144 words long. But in a sign that even ministers now realise what a mess they have made, it is followed by a further tortuously pleading 1,400 words which ‘must be read together’ with it.
You will be relieved to hear, according to this ‘accompanying text,’ that the definition is no threat at all to ‘the fundamental right of every person in the UK to exercise freedom of speech,’ or to ‘academic and political discussion,’ or to ‘criticisms of religion or belief,’ or to ‘debates in the public interest.’
To which I reply: qui s’excuse, s’accuse (he who excuses himself, accuses himself). If this were not a threat to free speech, the government would not need to say so. And to which I also reply: for the state to publish a list of examples of permitted speech sets a deeply sinister precedent, and on subjects far wider than Muslims. Is only speech ‘in the public interest’ now to be allowed? Who decides what the public interest is? Doesn’t freedom mean the right to say something that’s not in the public interest, too?
Because of the war, and because it was wrapped in with a ‘community cohesion’ strategy that has some potentially good bits, the publication of this definition hasn’t caused as much of an immediate outcry as it normally would have done. But make no mistake: it will do.
Because freedom of speech is not the only problem. The government is acutely sensitive to charges of ‘two-tier’ policy – rejecting, for instance, the Sentencing Council’s scandalous demand that ethnic minority criminals be treated better.
Read also: The Islamic Blasphemy Law has Arrived by Gavin Ashenden