Category: Free speech online

Yesterday it became a criminal offence in the UK to express strong approval of some sections of the bible in public or to reproduce them on the internet, punishable by up to seven years imprisonment.  For instance:

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination (Lev 18:22).

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them(Lev 20:13).

The New Testament says:

Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God (1Cor 6:9f).

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another (Rom 1:24). *

As Cranmer (from whom I borrow the image) rightly observes:

Whatever one’s interpretation of the above scriptures, as of today it would be a bold preacher who so much as jokes about homosexuality.

Today is the appointed time by our wonderful Government for Section 74 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 to come into force. It creates the new offence of intentionally stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.

What is ‘hatred’?

OED: ‘intense dislike’.

It is not a matter of inciting violence or grievous bodily harm: there are already laws against that.

So it is now a crime to ‘intensely dislike’ homosexuality.

Or to ‘intensely dislike’ homosexuals.

Because the two are so easily confused in the mind of the victim (if not the perpetrator) that the mildest disapproval of the behaviour might be mistaken (or purposely distorted or misinterpreted) as vehement disapprobation to the extent that it becomes an irrational attack upon the person.

It is true that the Lords won an important ‘freedom of speech’ amendment, but it will exist only on paper. In practice, the culture will shift towards an auto-self-censorship: people will be so afraid of transgressing the law (or, worse still, of merely being accused of transgressing the law) that the jokes will subside, humour will diminish, drama will avoid the subject and real life will consequently be impoverished. Debates on sexuality will become taboo, not because of a statutory prohibition but because of an impediment to negativity, questioning, accusation and allegation.

Did you hear the one about the gay guy who…?

Bigot.

Call the police, report the crime.

And you can be very sure that the police will treat the allegations with the utmost urgency.

God forbid that Her Majesty’s Constabulary might be accused of being homophobic.

Nor is this effect accidental.  It is intentional.  It is intended to chill certain types of speech, to make people afraid to say what they think.  It is intended to allow gay campaigners to torment their enemies, to drag them into courts. 

Not the slightest effort has been made to limit the effect of the legislation.  As one minister gloated, the churches had better start  hiring lawyers.  This too is intentional — Ezra Levant has documented the technique of “lawfare”, of “maximum disruption” where a campaigner is given a legal basis to make as many complaints as he likes, at no charge to himself, against others, to drag them through the courts for months and years, to force them to run up huge legal bills.

Normal people may wonder why the establishment is so desperate to force unnatural vice upon us all, to make it a norm, to force us all to speak politely about it.  But the answer may be found in Paul Kocher’s Master of Middle Earth, which studied the Lord of the Rings: “It is not enough for evil if its victims do as it wants; they must be forced to do it against their wills.”  It is the arrogance of power to choose some evil, detestable to almost everyone, and force all to bow down to it.

This is evil.  This is a piece of hate, passing laws to permit and encourage and foster attacks by one tiny well-organised section of the community on another which is quiet, law-abiding, and harmless. 

It is specifically targetted at the churches.  Indeed we can be sure that the law was drafted by the gay lobbyists who intend to use it — there’s been enough in the press lately about the way in which Blair simply implemented the demands of Stonewall for some huge list of rights and privileges.

Some may say that this all has only a limited bearing on the gospel.  But so did sacrificing to Caesar; “a pinch of incense… what’s the harm in that?” asked the atheist Roman procurators.  It is a fingerprint.  It is intended as a test case.  Do you follow Christ, or Caesar?

How we oppose this evil I do not know.  That we can either oppose it together, or be picked off, one by one, seems certain to me.

* Cranmer also quotes a section of the Koran; but we can be sure that the Moslems are in no danger of interference!

The Liverpool Daily Post reports a curious incident:

A MILITANT atheist was found guilty of leaving grossly offensive religious images in a prayer room at Liverpool’s John Lennon airport.

Jurors took just 15 minutes to convict Harry Taylor, 59, of leaving obscene material depicting figures from Christianity and Islam, often in sexual poses, in the multi-faith room with the intention of causing harassment and alarm.

Taylor, who labelled himself a “militant atheist” admitted placing the items in the prayer room on three separate occasions, but insisted he was simply practising his own religion of “reason and rationality”.

And:

But he insisted people would only be offended if their faith was “weak” and that the images were meant as satire.

They had heard from airport chaplain Nicky Lees who told of her alarm after finding the images.

She said: “I was insulted, deeply offended and I was alarmed.”

As the unanimous verdicts were delivered, smartly-dressed Taylor simply raised an eye-brow, but showed no other emotion.

Taylor, of Griffin Street, Salford, Greater Manchester, declined to comment after his conviction on all three counts of religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress from November 2, 26, and December 12, 2008. Earlier in the day he had posed for a photographer outside court.

Neville Biddle, prosecuting …  revealed Taylor already has two convictions from May 18, 2006 for using abusive, insulting words or behaviour. He told how on that occasion Taylor had left similar offensive material in St Anne’s Church in the centre of Manchester. A postcard he left featured a picture of a monk with his middle finger raised and the words ‘Father f*****’. When he was arrested sexual cartoons were found in his possession.

Sentence is to be given on April 23.

The comments on the article tend to fall into familiar lines.  All the atheists claim that the chap is a martyr to free speech and that the trial is a joke, which shows how oppressive religion is (although they say that about any religious activity).  Almost everyone else thinks he is a jerk.  Few people seem to respect the chaplainess’ complaint of “being offended”.

We can’t quite rely on the reporting, unfortunately.  The United Kingdom now has laws which make it a criminal offence to insult Moslems, and are designed to chill any criticism of them.  As a result, reporting can be quite strange.  BBC news reports frequently report Moslem attacks on Christians in Africa as “clashes between Christians and Moslems”.  This particular report smells a bit, in that it refers to insults to Islam very briefly, yet there is no indication of the defendant being charged for insulting Moslems.  It’s clear that any attack on Islam was at best incidental.

But, on the facts as given, what do we make of this? 

Few of us have a problem with Christians being insulted (if only because it is commonplace).  Let people speak their minds, by all means.  If someone gets up on a soapbox and yells lying abuse at us, let them.  And indeed this is the state of affairs.  The same should apply to Islam (although in fact it does not in modern Britain).  All this is what we mean by free speech.

We do have a problem when Christians are insulted endlessly by those controlling the mass media, without right of reply.  That is very like bullying.  Not that the insults are objectionable; but the one-sidedness is.  Similarly if Christians may be insulted everywhere, but not permitted to reply, that is not free speech, but bullying.

But do we feel that it is OK to bomb churches (or mosques, or whatever) with material calculated to give the grossest insult to those who worship there?  Surely few of us do.  I’m not sure whether most of us could articulate why.  But I think the point is, not the content, but the place in which it is delivered.  The issue is not one of free speech, but the old-fashioned offence of behaviour calculated to provoke a breach of the peace.  A charge of harassment does not seem unreasonable.

It seems to be that the atheist was rightly prosecuted, but for the wrong reasons.  It is certainly his right to give offence.  Everyone should have this right.  But not in such a manner as is calculated to lead to public disorder. 

If he had displayed this material on his website, in my view he should have been protected by the right to free speech present in every free country.  But to shove it in the faces of worshippers in a place of prayer … that is a different matter altogether.  It’s not what you do, it’s when and where you do it.

The whole idea that an offence can be “religiously aggravated” is wrong and immoral.  This is designed to give certain religions the right to punish their enemies.  We all know that Christians are not intended here, of course; on the contrary, this was designed to give Moslems power.  It is an extension of the evil “racially aggravated” category, where a crime against me will be punished mildly if at all, but the same crime against an Asian savagely. 

This is the element that is unsavoury; the idea that certain privileged groups have the right not to feel offended.  The law should not concern itself with feelings, but with facts.  It should treat everyone equally, not privilege certain classes of victims.  This is the real offence in this story.  Punish the guy for what he did, but not for his reasons for doing it.

The same would apply online: stalking someone is objectionable; merely insulting his religion is not.

The police visit to blogger SeismicShock (real name Joseph Weissman) caused me to post here, and in the discussion at Index on Censorship, here, and here.  Seismic’s blog targeted mainly Stephen Sizer in his blog; but he also attacked Dr Anthony McRoy.  I queried his understanding of a lecture “The solace of the saviour” by McRoy online, here.  This evening I have had an email from Anthony McRoy to me, asking me to post this. 

UPDATE: See also a link to Seismic’s reply further down, and after that, McRoy’s final response.

Recently, I have come to your attention re. the Seismic Shock issue. I notice that you have correctly understood my paper on the Solace of the Saviour. Clearly, my position was not only to compare, but also to contrast Hezbollah’s jihad with Christian spiritual warfare, and campaigns for social change, such as against slavery. I should have thought it obvious which section I was endorsing – obviously, the Christian part!

I had given a paper the year before in Tehran, and I was invited to give another the following year. At the conference I attended, all the Muslims were excited about the outcome of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict that year. Since the subject of the conference is Mahdism and Messianic expectation, I thought it appropriate to examine the role of Mahdist expectation in the history of Hezbollah, and compare and contrast it with Messianic expectation in Christianity. The linking theme was Justice, since Muslim expectations of the Mahdi are that he will ‘fill the world with justice and equity’. Naturally, after offering an academic description (not endorsement) of this in Shi’ism and more expressly in the Iranian Revolution and Hezbollah, I looked at the Christian approach to Justice – and the means to achieve it – obviously, one that was non-violent.

Frankly, I would have thought it ridiculous that anyone would assume that I somehow believed in Islamic eschatology, especially as it influenced Khomeinist ideas. I have given a presentation at two universities in events organised by Christian Unions on ‘Islam and Christianity – similarities and differences’. Many Muslims as well as Christians attended these events. The Muslims seemed happy with the accuracy of my presentation, as were the Christians, but no-one asked me if I endorsed the parts of my presentation dealing with Islamic beliefs – nobody thought I believed in Islamic theology! I did not even have to spell out that obviously, I only believed in the section where I presented Christian theology. Everyone understood what I was doing. No one accused me of being some kind of syncretist – everyone understood that I am a conservative Evangelical. I am amazed that Mr Weissman could have misunderstood my position – do I really have to point out to people in future when I give a ‘compare and contrast’ presentation on any aspect of Islam and Christianity that I only endorse the Christian part? Would that not be insulting the intelligence of the audience?

Actually, I was unable to deliver the paper (Mr Weissman got that one wrong – if he’d bothered to contact me I could have told him), because I could not get a visa. The same happened the following year. I don’t know why that is. One possibility is something to which Mr Weissman has alluded – when, along with a number of other delegates at the conference, I met President Ahmadinejad at the Presidential home one night. At one point questions were invited, so I suggested a meeting between him and US Evangelical leaders to discuss both contemporary and historical difficulties between the two peoples, and I specifically mentioned the 1953 US/UK coup which toppled Iranian Premier Mossadeq – which still smarts in Iran – and not just among Khomeinists – and the 1979 US embassy hostage issue, which still smarts in America, both events poisoning relations. I said ‘US’ rather than ‘UK’ because the main confrontation is between Iran and America, and also because US Evangelicals are more numerous and influential than their British counterparts. Apart from inter-state issues, my intention was that a high delegation of US Evangelical leaders would be able to raise issues about the treatment of religious minorities in Iran and the Muslim world, and especially converts from Islam.

The President gave me a long answer, which did not rule out the possibility of such a meeting, but whilst referring to the 1953 coup, he never mentioned the US embassy issue. Mr Weissman has highlighted parts of an article (this comes originally from the Muslim Weekly, but was reproduced by the Iranian institute which invited me) where I wrote the following:

Those meeting Ahmadinejad commented how intelligent, humble, charismatic, and charming he was. Surprisingly, the US delegates seemed especially taken with him. Personally, I tend to be cautious of all politicians whatever their nationality, but I could why he worries America – not because of the nuclear issue, but because he is such a contrasting alternative for people in the region to the corrupt, self-interested pro-US despots that litter the Muslim world. Recent polls in the region show that Ahmadinejad is vastly popular. The Sunni Arab delegates lauded him. Certainly, it was wise of Bush to decline Ahmadinejad’s offer a debate. Those who remember the way George Galloway wiped the floor with Senator Coleman will have an idea of what would happen. Ahmadinejad gives quick, extensive and intelligent answers to any question, mixed with genial humour. Blair, an accomplished debater, could fence with him, but Bush would merely embarrass himself.

I remember writing a parallel article for Evangelicals Now (which Mr Weissman saw fit NOT to reproduce) where I elaborated on this, expressing disappointment that Ahmadinejad did not address the Embassy hostage issue. Please note that I did NOT say that I found him ‘intelligent, humble, charismatic, and charming’ -rather that was the reaction of others. I then made a descriptive analogy of his ability and manner in answering questions to explain why it would not have been a good idea for Bush to have debated him – but note that I said that Blair could have done so. Acknowledging someone’s debating ability and manner is NOT the same as endorsing his policies. I wrote an article for the Muslim Weekly on ‘The Legacy of GW Bush’ where I referred to Bush’s down-to-earth folksy manner, but no one assumed that I was thereby endorsing his policies – which clearly, in relation to the invasion of Iraq, I did not.

As an academic, I often get invited to speak on TV programmes on Islamic/Middle East issues – not just on Western TV, but also on Middle Eastern stations, including Iranian ones. Last year I was interviewed – not so much as a Christian, but as an academic expert – by Iran-based Press TV on the three revolutions in world history – the French, Russian and Iranian. When I addressed the latter, I was asked whether the revolution had been true to its roots. I answered that the Khomenists got what they wanted, but not the leftists, or secular democrats. Moreover, I observed that religious minorities – Jews, Christians Zoroastrians – were all excluded from political office, apart from dedicated seats in the Majlis (Parliament), and that Christian converts from Islam had often either been executed or ‘mysteriously’ disappeared only to turn-up dead. I also referred to the mistreatment of the Bahais.

I then stated that if Iran wanted to improve its relations with the West it would have to redress these issues – and again, I highlighted that people in the West, whatever their religious opinions, or how secular or even atheists they are, will never accept that a person should be killed because he changed his religion. I was recently interviewed by an Iranian state channel on the revolution, where I largely repeated these points, especially the on the killing of converts. Hardly a case of supporting Iranian policy – nor of failing to say to Iranians what I say to Western audiences. I did not compromise my message to one degree. Needless to say, Mr Weissman never referred to this on his website – perhaps he didn’t know. If he had contacted me in the normal way, I could have told him.

Perhaps the worst, most disgusting and outrageous allegation Mr Weissman made against me was when he decided to ‘examine’ what he maliciously misrepresented as ‘apparent admiration for Al Qaida, and terrorist leaders Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.’ In fact, these referred to articles I wrote in the Muslim Weekly, the first of which stated the following:

Two years ago, at a Ramadan event in the Houses of Parliament, one young Muslim man approached me. He said he had wanted to meet me for some time, since he liked my articles. Then he made a telling observation: “We wouldn’t dare say the things you say about Al-Qaida!” I understood what he meant. As a Born-again Christian, nobody could suspect me of sympathy for Al-Qaida’s methods (which contradict every aspect of New Testament ethics) or its ultimate aim of the united Islamic caliphate. Obviously, as an academic, I can write articles giving a scholarly analysis of Al-Qaida from a detached perspective – recognising where their methods were clever and effective, even if from my moral perspective, based on the ethics of Jesus, these tactics were malign. If a Muslim attempted this, as the young man implied, he might be accused of sympathy for Al-Qaida. Hardly surprising that Muslims are wary of attempting this (and in the light of the Forest Gate raid, such fears are well-grounded – even a long beard is sufficient ground for suspicion these days).

My point is that as an academic, I can give an objective, scholarly analysis of Al-Qaida, and being a Christian, not face the suspicions Muslims might of sympathy for the group. Indeed, if I were to give an objective, scholarly analysis of the invasion of Iraq, I would state that it was an effective military operation. A moral evaluation would be different – I strongly opposed the Iraq war as illegal, and because of its foreseeable consequences – the strengthening of Al-Qaida, the exodus of Christians. At the end of the article I suggested a policy initiative which would, among other things ‘isolate Al-Qaida’. Again, after analysing the ruthless jihad of Zarqawi, I commented ‘Perhaps that is the greatest condemnation of the invasion of Iraq – it created the very thing it was supposed to eradicate.’ Obviously, I was condemning the Iraq war for creating the condition which allowed a murderous terrorist like Zarqawi to operate.

It seems obvious that Mr Weissman has trawled the Web for articles about me, as well as listening to Premier Radio. He must have heard me many times condemning Al-Qaida, and how could he have missed this article, actually written on 7/7, reporting the events of the day, and expressing condemnation of the group – http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/julyweb-only/44.0.html?

This brings me to the point of my agreeing to the police talking to Mr Weissman. His comments about me – misrepresenting me as a supporter of Al-Qaida – placed me and my wife and children in physical danger. My children came across Weissman’s comments once when surfing the web. Imagine if there had another major Al-Qaida operation against the UK like 7/7. What if people were killed – and then people in my neighbourhood, or pupils at my children’s school, surfing the web, came across Weissman’s falsehood that I supported Al-Qaida. In the fear and outrage following such an incident, my family could have become the targets of revengeful violence.

Free speech ends where violence is incited. If someone anonymously started a poison pen campaign against an innocent man in a neighbourhood, delivering leaflets falsely claiming that he was a paedophile, he would very likely be subjected to violence, never mind career issues. I’m sure Mr Weissman would object if someone did this to him. I am not saying that Mr Weissman intended to incite violence against me and my family, but I fail to see how anyone could make such an allegation and not know that it could physically danger the object of such an outrageous smear. What Mr Weissman did in this respect was not criticism – he is perfectly free to criticise my articles if he wishes, though I wish he would do so properly, without misrepresenting my position – but there is no liberty to place someone in physical danger, as he did with me, my wife and children.

It was on this basis that the police became involved. It was my expressed wish that Mr Weissman not be the subject of legal action – rather, that the police would simply have a quiet word with him, imploring him to see reason, by acquainting him with the fact that we were concerned that his campaign was placing us in physical danger. At NO point did I want to prevent Mr Weissman expressing his viewpoints in a normal manner. His free speech was never in question – rather, his reckless endangerment of us was the issue. Since harassment and physical endangerment is a valid police concern, I cannot see that this is an issue of free speech, or of police overstepping the mark. Moreover, the fact that Mr Weissman engaged in his campaign from a position of anonymity, as with ‘poison pen letter’ attacks, made it impossible to do anything else other than to involve the police. Further, after the police saw him, I did not request his details. I would have been happy to let the matter rest.

I have taken into account that Mr Weissman is a young man, and we have all done things when we were young that we later regret, myself included, although I was not a Born-again Christian at the time, as is Mr Weissman . The fact that Mr Weissman is a fellow-Christian who has, doubtless unwittingly , endangered my family, has caused incredulity among friends and family who know about it – one of my children asked me: ‘Isn’t he supposed to be a Christian?’ Had he contacted me the normal way I would have been more than willing to engage in a respectful dialogue with him; unfortunately, Mr Weissman chose not to do so.

Ultimately, his actions against me seem to spring from the fact that we have differing opinions on Palestine. For over thirty years, since my conversion, I have taken to heart Colossians 3:11 – ‘there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.’ Whilst upholding the uniqueness of Christ as Saviour, I have opposed all forms of racism and sectarianism, and I glory in being a member of a multi-racial congregation, living in a multi-ethnic area, having friends from different ethnic and religious groups, including Muslims, and having members of my family from ethnic minorities. This is the basis of my position on Palestine, but it also motivated my opposition to Milosevic’s policies in Bosnia and Kosova, as well as to the racist and Islamophobic policies of the BNP (whom I have frequently condemned in various articles), to the mistreatment of Kurds and Assyrians, and , of course, to the mistreatment of Christians and other minorities in many Muslim countries. I have frequently raise the latter point in article for Muslim publications, and at Muslim meetings. I did so recently at a Muslim meeting, where I called on British Muslims not to accept financing or invite officials from oppressive Muslim regimes such as the Saudis who deny any religious liberty, noting (in an oblique reference to the BNP representative present) how this aids Islamophobic elements at elections.

I know that Mr Weissman is a Messianic Jewish Christian. I am proud that my father in-law helped to save Jewish children from the Holocaust. I have confronted Muslims who have denied its historical reality – including when I was in Iran. I have objected to Muslims taking Qur’anic texts which mention Jews out of context and misinterpreting them to justify communal hostility. Some years ago I met a leading British Messianic Jewish Christian, whom I invited to speak at my church, and we had great fellowship with him in our home on a couple of occasions when he visited, despite our differences on Palestine. Perhaps Mr Weissman was unaware of this, but had he contacted me in the normal way, I could have acquainted him with the facts. After all, since we are both Evangelical Christians, wouldn’t Matthew 5:23-24 apply? Please note that I never attacked (or even referred to) Mr Weissman in any article, or tried to vilify him online or in any media, yet not only on his own website, but on others, he has misrepresented me and endangered my family. If he is really interested in a respectful dialogue, I would be willing to meet him. I would suggest that this should be everyone’s first move before engaging in an anonymous web-based tirade against fellow-Christians which only serves to bring the Gospel into disrepute.

UPDATE: Seismic Shock has responded to this here.  He also kindly offered the piece to me to post here, but I felt that the discussion is moving away from the free speech issue into general areas, and that my doing so here would not be appropriate.  I will post any further response from Dr. McRoy, however.

UPDATE2:  Dr McRoy has sent me this, heading Final Comment.

I am glad that Mr Weissman has responded to my post. I now want to make a final statement on the issue, after which I will make no other. So please, don’t anyone waste his/her time trying to bait me, since I will not respond. Firstly, I find it hard to read Weissman’s comment that ‘I did not say that Dr McRoy supported Al Qaida’ with this: ‘and now examines his apparent admiration for Al Qaida, and terrorist leaders Osama Bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. McRoy on sympathy for Al Qaida:’

If that is not an accusation that I ‘supported’ Al-Qaida, I don’t know what is. To state that I ‘admire’ or have ‘sympathy’ for Al-Qaida is surely the same as to state that I ‘support’ Al-Qaida. This seems a matter of semantics. However, I take Mr Weissman’s comment that this was NOT his intention, but for the record, I do not admire ‘Zarqawi’s cleverness’ or anything about Al-Qaida. I strongly oppose it. However, as an academic, it is my job to dispassionately analyse events. As I stated, the Iraq invasion was, objectively speaking, an effective military operation. The moral evaluation of the war is a different matter, and I opposed the invasion.

My point is that such a comment – that I ‘admired’ or had ‘sympathy’ for Al-Qaida could have serious consequences for the safety of my family and myself. Remember that after 9/11 and 7/7, ordinary Muslims and even non-Muslim Asians – especially Sikhs – were attacked. Were another bombing to occur, it is likely that such events would be replicated. What if people in my area saw it, or fellow-pupils of my children? My children have been mugged at knife-point in the past – a revenge attack following an Al-Qaida bombing could well involve more than being slapped. I know Mr Weissman is a young man, and probably not married with children. When he is blessed with children, he will be concerned for their welfare. I should emphasise that my children saw his comment and reported it to me. Can he begin to imagine how concerned I was that such language could lead to an attack on my family? I fully accept now that this was not his intention, but it was nonetheless a case of reckless endangerment to use such language that could be taken as meaning that I support Al-Qaida.

To give an example. In 2007 I reported that a young Muslim had posted a video on Youtube  entitled “In memory of Councillor Alan Craig”. Pictures of Craig, which included his wife and young children, then followed. I commented: ‘It is the involvement of his wife and children that Craig has found most objectionable. In a video posted after the media attention, the video’s author – Abdullah1425 – claimed that he was not making a death threat, but rather engaging in “light-hearted political satire”. However, many people might find it difficult to spot the humour. For a start, what is amusing about a video with an “obituary” theme? Surely the message is: “we wish you were dead!” Furthermore, the video contains the quotation of the Qur’anic verse Surah Al-Baqarah 2:156 From Allah we all come and to Him we all return.’  (http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/001665.php) Cllr Craig reported the matter to the police, who interviewed the young man, but did not charge him. However, few will feel that Cllr Craig did not do the right thing by contacting the police on this matter, especially as it involved his family.

Again, imagine if someone living in a Muslim area of Britain was accused of being a MOSSAD agent. What would be likely to happen to him? Last year there was another incident of Evangelical in-fighting, and Dr Patrick Sookhdeo approached me for help. One smear going round the Muslim community was that he was a MOSSAD agent. He was naturally concerned for his safety and that of his family and colleagues. I was happy to contact leading Muslims to set the record straight, as well as intervening to help the breach between him and other Evangelicals. I’m sure Mr Weissman can appreciate why Patrick was concerned at the smear and its possible consequences. I hope he now understands why I was concerned at his representation of my position.

Mr Weissman asks why I didn’t post on his blog. Basically, I don’t do that on any blog, and certainly not on anonymous ones. In fact, as a matter of principle, I never respond to anonymous correspondence. It is well-said that the Internet is a dangerous place. I can never understand people who go into chatrooms, and we’ve all heard stories of how paedophiles hide their identity in such sites to groom young victims, often posing as teenagers or children themselves. Mr Weissman never identified himself to me, nor contacted me in the normal way. All he did was to write under a pseudonym  – ‘Mordechai’ – on the Premier Radio page:

At 2:49am on May 9, 2009, Mordechai said…

Hi Antony, would you like to comment on these pieces?

I’m sure your employers at Premier Christian Radio would be horrified to learn that you praised Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when you went to Iran, and compared the faith of Hezbollah suicide bombers who kill in expectation of the Mahdi with the faith of Christians who practise social justice in expectation of the 2nd coming of Jesus?

 

Hmm… better delete this comment before they find it! 

 

Is this a normal communication? It is more like a taunt. Had Mr Weissman contacted me in his own name and in a normal, polite manner, I would have been happy to dialogue with him, but his anonymity, his trawling of the Web, his misrepresentations of my position smacked of cyber-bullying and harassment. In the light of the campaign he waged against me, I wonder how else I was supposed to view his depiction of me as ‘admiring’ and ‘sympathising’ with Al-Qaida – and what the possible consequences of this were. Remember, my children reported this to me.

It was on that basis that the police got involved. I emphasis that I did not ask for prosecution, still less for Mr Weissman’s views to be silenced, but merely for this apparent harassment – i.e. the physical endangerment of my family – to be addressed. Again, had Mr Weissman never engaged in an anonymous campaign against me, there would have been no reason for the police to get involved. Rather than my posting on his blog, surely it was his responsibility to contact me in the normal way. I reiterate that I have never threatened him with violence, nor even mentioned him in any article or broadcast. Moreover, just as I helped  Dr Sookhdeo last year when his safety was imperilled, I wish in the spirit of Christian compassion to extend an offer to help Mr Weissman if he ever faces any threats from Islamic extremists. 

This is not PR; it is a sincere offer. Over the years I have found myself in similar positions. Once, when covering an Al-Muhajiroun demo outside the US Embassy, I went into the garden opposite to find an Orthodox Jewish gentleman on his mobile. When he finished, I approached him, informing him of the approaching rally. He was very frightened, but grateful for my help. Another time, covering a different demo, some young Muslims became aggressive to a Jewish man who was arguing with them, so I held them back while he got away. There are two other incidents that come to mind, for example when I restrained an Al-Muhajiroun member from attacking a homosexual Asian man, or a towering Kosovar who, a few days after a mass grave was unearthed in his country, went to pulverise an American heckler at a rally, but was held back by me until the heckler went away. 

To return to my paper, The Solace of the Saviour. Mr Weissman does not seem to realise that I never got to deliver the paper, because I couldn’t get a visa! Perhaps it was because of my comments to President Ahmadinejad about the 1979 US Embassy hostage event, but I don’t know. I gave a different paper the year I was in Iran. I am surprised by Weissman’s comments that ‘It worries me that McRoy thinks that here he is merely expressing a dispassionate academic opinion. He must surely have had some idea of how these ideas would be interpreted by his audience in the Islamic Republic of Iran.’ The year I was actually in Iran, and gave my original paper, everyone in the audience seemed to understand my position – no one, Muslim or non-Muslim – concluded that I believed in Islamic eschatology. In fact, I was immediately interviewed by three Iranian TV stations on Christian beliefs, especially eschatology. I think we need to have some faith the intelligence of our audiences. 

Part of the problem is that Mr Weissman doesn’t seem to appreciate that in my paper, I am often quoting passages that disturb him, e.g. ‘Hezbollah also used one of its own special types of resistance against the Zionist enemy that is the suicide attacks. These attacks dealt great losses to the enemy on all thinkable levels such as militarily and mentally. The attacks also raised the moral [i.e. morale] across the whole Islamic nation.’ He should really observe its footnote: ‘Hezbollah, Hezbollah: Identity and goals, http://www.hizbollah.org/english/info.htm#1 2001.’ That is, I quoted a Hezbollah statement about themselves.  My position is not ‘kind words for the similarly apocalyptic drive of Khomeinist Islam’, but simple analysis. 

We should remember that such conferences are not debates, such as when Jay Smith attempts to deconstruct Islam in his campus debates with Muslims. Rather, the former are presentations. I was asked to present a paper on Mahdism and Messianic expectation, the latter from a Christian view. The first part of any paper naturally dealt with Islamic Mahdism, in which I gave an objective description; the second part presented Christian eschatology, which, of course, is what I believe. I have only ever done two debates, both on Premier Radio and both with Abdul-Haq Al-Ashanti, a Western convert to Islam, who produced a work against historical Christianity called Before Nicea, to which I am writing a response (one reason that I don’t do much journalistic writing these days). Abdul-Haq and I debated respectfully but forthrightly .

Furthermore, I did not express admiration for Ahmadinejad’s talents, I simply described his abilities in answering questions, which is purely a statement of fact. The same goes, as virtually every commentator observed, even those opposed to him, for George Galloway in his appearance before the US Senate. 

As I said, I think the root of the problem between Mr Weissman and myself is our different positions on Palestine. The basis of my position is Amillennial eschatology, plus concern for equal rights for all people, irrespective of race and creed. Moreover, Mr Weissman must not think that I highlight Palestine in this. I also speak up for equal rights all over the world. In my previous employment as a Bible-college lecturer, during the dark days of Apartheid in South Africa I had a picture of Nelson Mandela in my office, and as I said previously, Colossians 3:11 is my motivation in this. To bring this back to the Muslim world, obviously the central problem – after terrorism – is the unequal status of religious minorities therein. As Mr Weissman now knows, I speak out regularly on this subject. Equally, I have spoken out against Islamophobia in Britain, being one of the first people to expose the BNP for moving towards prioritising this prejudice in their electoral strategy. 

The other side of opposing Islamophobia is opposing Islamic extremism.  As someone from a Jewish background, Mr Weissman may be interested to learn that I have confronted a Hizb ut-Tahrir member who at a meeting made an attack on ‘Jews’ (not on Israeli policy, Jews).  I have written to criticise those Muslims who abuse Qur’anic texts to depict Jews as ‘apes and pigs’. At one of the first Muslim conferences I attended in the course of my studies, I confronted one of the organisers about a speaker who denied the Holocaust. I did the same in Iran when I met a European Muslim who made similar denials.

Having repented of my sinful views as a youth, I have spent the last thirty years as embracing Biblical multi-racialism and opposing sectarian oppression, without compromising on the uniqueness of Jesus. Over the years, I have spent much time trying to persuade young Muslim men not to get involved in extremism – as I did in my teens, before my conversion. The last thing I want is to see such youths blowing-up themselves – and others – in Tel Aviv, Iraq, Afghanistan, New York – or London. Obviously – and I am quite forthright with Muslims on this issue – I would love to see them be Born-again of the Holy Spirit, who  would give them peaceful attitudes, but short of that, not to join Al-Qaida, or HAMAS or Hezbollah of any militant group for that matter, but rather to utilise their democratic rights as British citizens to campaign peacefully for their concerns.  The fact that I have been forthright in my criticism of negative Western policies in the Muslim world has given me some credibility in seeking to steer them away from extremism – especially terrorism.  The fact that we have many Muslim friends, as have our children, make such a concern especially strong. 

In closing, may I reiterate that if Mr Weissman had presented my position properly, and contacted me directly using his real name, all this unpleasantness could have been avoided. In the spirit of Christian reconciliation,as expressed in Colossians 3:11 and 2 Corinthians 5:18ff, I wish to say that I forgive Mr Weissman for anything he has done, and ask his forgiveness for anything I have done. I would hope that at the end of this, we could, as fellow Born-again Christians, break bread together.

NOTE: I revised this post, after further details became available.  I have now revised and updated it again.  I’m beginning to wonder whether this is about free speech at all.

I was idly reading a blog or two while downloading Cramer’s catena, and I stumbled across this, which excited me so much that I felt I had to write.

At 10am on Sunday 29th November 2009, I received a visit from two policemen regarding my activities in running the Seismic Shock blog. (Does exposing a vicar’s associations with extremists make me a criminal?, I wondered initially). A sergeant from the Horsforth Police related to me that he had received complaints via Surrey Police from Rev [Stephen] Sizer and from Dr Anthony McRoy – a lecturer at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology – who both objected to being associated with terrorists and Holocaust deniers. …

The sergeant made clear that this was merely an informal chat, in which I agreed to delete my original blog (http://seismicshock.blogspot.com/) but maintain my current one (http://seismicshock.wordpress.com). The policeman related to me that his police force had been in contact with the ICT department my previous place of study, and had looked through my files, and that the head of ICT at my university would like to remind me that I should not be using university property in order to associate individuals with terrorists and Holocaust deniers (I am sure other people use university property to make political comments, but nevermind).

Now I didn’t know any of the background about this.  Index on Censorship were also interested:

Blogger Seismic Shock, a Yorkshire-based student, received an alarming visit from local police late last year. Seismic … had been heavily critical of Anglican vicar Stephen Sizer on his blog, alleging that Sizer associated with Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites.

On 29 November, he received a visit from local police, who advised him to remove certain posts from his blog. The police officers maintained that this was an “informal chat”, but the blogger, understandably intimidated, agreed to remove his original Blogger site, while maintaining his WordPress blog.

Index on Censorship has made numerous attempts to contact West Yorkshire Police in order to clarify a) under what authority the blogger was visited by police and b) what potential breach of law had been commited by the blogger that warranted such a visit.

I am a non-combatant on the politics in all this.  Indeed it seems this is a matter of politics, pro- or anti-Israel.  But I am definitely a combatant on the idea that the police should come round “for a chat” with bloggers. 

Many people now know the techniques of “lawfare” piloted in Canada and ably documented by Ezra Levant.  It doesn’t matter whether the victim is actually found guilty.  The technique is to hound them through the courts, with endlessly drawn-out (and expensive!) “investigations”.  The process is the punishment.  In consequence, we may look with very nervous eyes at events such as these.  If the police are called out because of our views, who can be safe? 

I was angry, as most of us would be.  I decided to look into this a bit.

UPDATE: The police have now issued a statement:

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “As a result of a report of harassment, which was referred to us by Surrey Police, two officers from West Yorkshire Police visited the author of the blog concerned. The feelings of the complainant were relayed to the author who voluntarily removed the blog. No formal action was taken.

I have also been reading the Seismic Shock blog.  It’s somewhat distasteful.  The general impression is of a campaign of posts designed to smear Steven Sizer and Anthony McRoy, in order to intimidate them from expressing their own views.  This, of course, is also an attack on free speech.  (I am not a combatant either way on the political issues between the two sides).

I find myself torn.  A case of genuine harassment — of net-stalking — is a different matter from issues of free speech.

In the UK, only the rich can go to law.  Everyone else is basically without options.  If someone started a campaign of vilification against me, designed to intimidate me from expressing my views, I would have few options but to go to the police.  It seems that this may be what has happened here.  What else could Sizer and McRoy do?  Material pumping out on the web, designed and arranged to smear them, drip drip drip?

But … I am still uncomfortable with this.  Do we want bloggers being vetted by the police?  Yet, what do I do, if some anonymous swine sets up a hate site directed against me, and designed to ruin my reputation, cost me my job, my career, whatever?  What would you do?  Is this what we’re looking at?

I still don’t feel that we have got to the bottom of all the issues here.  But it is clearly more complex than I first thought.

UPDATE 2:  I’m beginning to get a very bad feeling about the claims about “freedom of speech” being deployed here.  The more I look into this, the more complex it looks.

All of us, I take it, are in favour of free speech online.  None of us are keen to have the police appear if we say something someone else doesn’t like.

But that doesn’t seem to be the issue.  The Seismic Shock blog ran a campaign targeting Sizer and McRoy personally, again and again and again.  Every post was “Anti-semite! Anti-semite!” and so on.  That’s not free speech; that’s intimidation.  The object, plainly, was to demonise these two men, and thereby silence them.  The comments added by others on these posts are often simply hateful.

I have not read through all this material.  A few I have seen, more or less accidentally.  Here he gloats that a sermon by McRoy has been removed by a church.  Here he quote mines that sermon with a lecture delivered in Iran, to accuse McRoy of hypocrisy, insinuating that McRoy shares Madhist views (when he knows that McRoy is describing how these people see themselves).  Here he sneers at McRoy for being polite about the Iranian despot whom he was forced to endure, plainly just out of malice.  Some at least of his allies do the same.  Here’s an example, posted today, in which Mr Sizer is demonized for the fact that some other site had pirated his book!

The funny thing is, I more or less share Seismic‘s views on Israel vs Palestinians.  But I do NOT share his idea that personal intimidation and abuse is a legitimate form of debate.  Still less do I endorse his attempts to ruin the careers of two blameless men whose only crime is to hold a political view — admittedly a mistaken one — with which he disagrees.  Shrieking “Nazi! Nazi!” is just as bad as shrieking “Jew! Jew!”, and indeed tends to be pronounced in the same way and for the same purposes. 

I am certainly in favour of free-speech.  I am NOT in favour of intimidation, or censorship by intimidation, as a means to stifle free-speech.  And the more I look, the more it looks to me as if we are all being scammed.

Did his victims do the only thing open to them, by going to the police and complaining of harassment?  The evidence was clear, and the material — which we have not seen — evidently grossly offensive; and the author made no attempt to defend it but backed down.

I would suggest everyone interested in free speech start looking at what Seismic Shock has been doing.  If I am right, he hasn’t been exercising free speech, but instead has been running a campaign of intimidation, designed to stifle the free speech of Sizer and McRoy. He’s been questioned because this was harassment, pure and simple, rather than a political offence. 

I could still be wrong.  But I have this bad feeling…

UPDATE 3 (26/01/2009): I’m still not sure about this, and have wavered again since I wrote yesterday.  I really, really do NOT want to see bloggers interfered with by the police.  Seismic’s posts may have been incessant but … were they harassment?  Were they intimidation?  Only one side is speaking here, so we must be sceptical.  But …. I don’t know.

A lot of those attacking Stephen Sizer are plainly doing so because they don’t like his politics.  Well, I don’t either; but that isn’t the issue, and it confuses the issue, for me anyway.  Dunno.

UPDATE 4 (26/01/2009): A comment abusing me personally has appeared below, and has been linked to with approval by Seismic.  It’s interesting to see this play out, and how each side behaves.

The UK mass media is controlled by a relatively small number of people, but sets the “tone” of public debate.  In the last week I have come across three examples where stories of considerable public interest are simply not reported, and strangled by silence.

The first of these is the climate-change emails scandal.  Hackers stole a bunch of emails from the University of East Anglia, by leading climate change scientists, together with source code for the climate models being used as the basis for all the predictions of world catastrophe.  This revealed much data which Freedom of Information requests had failed to extract.  It revealed systematic and seemingly fraudulent tampering with the data and the algorithms by those same scientists. The source code revealed comments showing intentional “fudges” to mask the fact that global temperatures had actually been declining during the late 20th century.  There are endless extracts from this at Small Dead Animals.  But you wouldn’t know anything about this scandal from the UK mass media.  The “theft” of emails is reported; not the fraud thereby apparently uncovered.  The fact that Phil Jones, the director, has been forced to step aside is reported, as a minor thing, with the expectation that he will be vindicated.  Mid-week I watched a “news” item on ITV droning out propaganda for minute after minute as if this scandal had never broken.

Another item has been the scandal where Members of Parliament have claimed “expenses” for such items as cleaning the moat at their stately home and other items clearly not for the purpose of carrying out their duties.  This has been a major national scandal.  The local MP, John Gummer claimed $15,000 a year for gardening services, for four years.  Other MP’s who have helped themselves to our taxes have had to resign.  Yet … I have seen little trace of this in the local media, on the TV.  A local MP, a substantial scandal, and … silence.  As a result it seems that he is likely to continue as MP for a further 5 years, despite being 70 years old and doing little that I can see.

We should be grateful for the blogosphere.  Those who tell us what the mighty and corrupt would rather we did not hear do us all great service.  This is why we need free speech online. 

The German government presses ahead with internet censorship.   The pretext originally was to stop child pornography; now the controls are in place, the mask is dropped and large-scale censorship is envisaged.  This report from SlashDot.org:

“It’s only been a few weeks since the law dubbed Zugangserschwerungsgesetz (access impediment law) was passed in the German Parliament despite over 140,000 signatures of people opposed to it. The law will go into effect in mid-October 2009. Now Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen implied in an interview that she is planning on extending the reach of the law, claiming ‘…or else the great Internet is in danger of turning into a lawless range of chaos, where you’re allowed to bully, insult, and deceive limitlessly.’ More on golem.de via Google translate (here is the German original).”

The best person to decide on what people must say is the German government? Dr Goebbels is proud of you, Frau von der Leyen.  Petty officials up and down Germany must be salivating at the chance to fine and imprison other Germans for being rude, or saying things which the state considers “untrue”. 

I hesitated on whether to post on this, but in the end felt that I had to, as a truly horrible step too far.  Last Friday two men in the UK were given stiff jail sentences.  Their crime?  Running a website posting material which the UK government considered was “offensive”.  The BBC report is here.

No-one seems to have been hurt.  No quantifiable injury to anyone is mentioned anywhere that I have seen.  The offence was to verbally attack ethnic minorities of various sorts.  Apparently — the BBC is vague — they may have queried the holocaust as well in some way.

Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle correctly assessed their chances of justice, and fled to the US and asked for asylum, since they had committed no crime under US law and their website was based in the US.  The judge, who apparently has a history of left-wing activism, denied them asylum.

Judge Rodney Grant told the men their material was “abusive and insulting” and had the potential to cause “grave social harm”.

He added: “Such offences as these have, by their very nature, the potential to cause grave social harm, particularly in a society such as ours which has, for a number of years now, been multi-racial.

Um.  So, no actual harm to anyone.  He then sentenced Simon Sheppard to four years and ten months in prison, and Stephen Whittle to a lesser term.

But…

That, said Adil Khan, head of diversity and community cohesion at Humberside Police, makes their conviction a first.

“This case is groundbreaking,” he said.

“The fact is now that we’ve been able to demonstrate that you’ve got nowhere to hide; people have been hiding on [sic] the fact that this server was in the US.

“Inciting racial hatred is a crime and one which seems to occur too regularly. This kind of material will not be tolerated as this lengthy investigation shows.”

Um.  Inciting feelings … Was any evidence that these feelings *were* incited produced at the trial?  Who precisely came along to testify that he now hated immigrants?   Surely this is just weasel words for “saying anything that I think might cause people to react negatively to something I approve of.”  I wonder how many political campaigns would pass that test? 

Note the length of the sentences.  Now look at this article: a drug dealer got more or less the same.  Wreck hundreds of lives and make a million, and you get just under five years.  Say Wrong Things, and you get just under five years.  And we can be pretty certain that the establishment will bully and abuse Sheppard and Whittle in prison, in a way it would never dare do to a favoured group.

Groundbreaking?  Yes, indeed it is.  How proud we all are of Humberside police, and their “head of diversity and community cohesion”.

You have to hate people pretty badly to lock them up for their opinions.  Whether we agree with Sheppard and Whittle is irrelevant; they had the right to say what they thought.  At least, they thought they did.

First they came for those they called  “racists”…

(Thanks to Five Feet of Fury for the tip).

A new law has been passed in Ireland.  It’s being called a blasphemy law, because this is a Catholic country and voters will suppose that it is intended to protect the Church.  But the real effect is to allow the establishment to silence any criticism of whichever powerful and noisy groups it pleases.  Who these groups are, who are to be above criticism, remains to be seen.

Atheist site Palibandaily has the legal text here:

36. Publication or utterance of blasphemous matter.

(1) A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000. [Amended to €25,000]

(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if (a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and (b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.

(3) It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates.

37. Seizure of copies of blasphemous statements.

(1) Where a person is convicted of an offence under section 36, the court may issue a warrant (a) authorising any member of the Garda Siochana to enter (if necessary by the use of reasonable force) at all reasonable times any premises (including a dwelling) at which he or she has reasonable grounds for believing that copies of the statement to which the offence related are to be found, and to search those premises and seize and remove all copies of the statement found therein, (b) directing the seizure and removal by any member of the Garda Siochana of all copies of the statement to which the offence related that are in the possession of any person, © specifying the manner in which copies so seized and removed shall be detained and stored by the Garda Siochana.

(2) A member of the Garda Siochana may (a) enter and search any premises, (b) seize, remove and detain any copy of a statement to which an offence under section 36 relates found therein or in the possession of any person, in accordance with a warrant under subsection (1).

(3) Upon final judgment being given in proceedings for an offence under section 36, anything seized and removed under subsection (2) shall be disposed of in accordance with such directions as the court may give upon an application by a member of the Garda Siochana in that behalf.  

I’ve marked a couple of key words in bold.  The law says that if a well-organised group get upset (and the poster intended them to get upset — but I imagine this caveat will have no meaning) that makes it blasphemous. 

Note also 36c; this means that members of the establishment will be excluded from this law, under the usual “it’s art, innit” pretext.

The atheists at Palibandaily say that they are worried.  This must be because they imagine themselves as the intended victims.  They could be, so broad is the scope — they’re right there — but it’s unlikely I think.  The establishment hardly ever worries about atheists.  Indeed in Britain it would be hard to find a figure more at the heart of the establishment than Richard Dawkins.  Indeed an atheist in Scotland is an avid campaigner for laws to ban “hate” — no different in principle or effect.

Likewise an article in the Guardian is here.  The anger in the comments will provoke a wry smile or two from Christians in the UK, about to be jailed if gay pressure groups want them to be.

No-one really knows who the intended victims are.  It is pleasing, in a way, to see these intolerant people now feeling threatened by the sort of laws for which they have so assiduously campaigned.  But it is a pleasure that passes, and I doubt these laws will.  It will only need a small change of political temperature for the same approach to be applied to others.

We live in a period when special interest groups get the government to pass laws allowing them to drag before courts anyone who expresses any objection to them, or their views.  This has happened in Canada, where Ezra Levant is leading the fightback, it is happening in Britain, it is happening here in Ireland.  When I was young, any very strong expression of opinion was likely to be greeted with “It’s a free country.”  No-one says that any more.

All these laws that criminalise opinion or speech or feelings, are evil.  They are always selective, always biased, always political.  To me, government is a utility; a way to get the roads built and the drains to work, and the police to restrain thugs, and the army to defend us from the likes of Kim Il Sung.  I do not want the powerful telling me what to think, what to say, what to write; I do not want them equipping my fellow citizen with the means to drag me into court, pretending “outrage.”

In days gone by, censorship was justified by protecting us from a torrent of filth.  Today we have the torrent of filth.  So… why do we have so much censorship?

FREE SPEECH.  NOW.