No? Well, until yesterday, neither did I. But apparently it now is, as of yesterday. On Thursday 23rd September 2010 it became a crime. We found this out when six men were arrested for doing so. No-one knows who decided it was a crime.
They were charged under “inciting racial hatred”, one of those laws of so very broad interpretation favoured by certain parts of the political spectrum, who know that people of their own persuasion will decide who is to be arrested for doing something no-one knew was a crime, and who can sleep soundly knowing they need not worry, whatever they do.
Duane Smith comments on the constraint of freedom of expression.
I wrote the stuff below a few days ago and for some reason didn’t post it at the time. But the arrest of “[s]ix men from northern England . . . after they filmed themselves burning a copy of the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11 and then posted the footage on YouTube [AOL News]” prompted me to post it this evening. What I wrote then and post now applies by analogy to the UK and any other part of the world that thinks of itself as civilized and moral.
Read it and worry. Today it is a bunch of Geordies having a lark who find themselves in handcuffs. Tomorrow, will it be us?
That’s bizarre. I’d think people would start burning Korans now, not out of any particular animosity to Islam, but just to prove nobody can forbid them. Unless inciting contempt for the government is a crime too…
I suspect that this is just what the six men did, in response to the hoohaa over the Florida Koran burning — and the arrest is the response of the establishment.