"Christian group may seek ban on Qur'an"

"Christian group may seek ban on Qur'an"

by Stephen Bates and Julian Glover ("The Guardian," October 12, 2005)

London, England - A Protestant evangelical pressure group has warned that
it will try to use the government's racial and religious hatred law to
prosecute bookshops selling the Qur'an for inciting religious hatred.

Christian Voice, a fringe fundamentalist group which first came to public
prominence this year when it campaigned against the BBC's broadcasting of
Jerry Springer The Opera, was among the evangelical organisations taking
part in a 1,000-strong demonstration against the bill outside parliament
yesterday as the House of Lords held a second reading debate on the
measure.

Its director, Stephen Green, said the organisation would consider taking
out prosecutions against shops selling the Islamic holy book. He told the
Guardian: "If the Qur'an is not hate speech, I don't know what is. We will
report staff who sell it. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that
unbelievers must be killed."

The sectarian organisation's tactics have regularly appalled other
Christian groups. Its website proclaims its right to protect its own
freedom of speech in attacking other religious groups: MPs "have no right
to try to stifle our freedom to preach the gospel. It is not just Islam
which is the problem. If a preacher is explaining the horrors of Hinduism
.. a charge of stirring up religious hatred would be almost inevitable.
Preaching against sin in general, or adultery or homosexuality in
particular, may also land a preacher in court."

The bill has seen a wide range of Christian groups making common cause
with secularists. Yesterday the Catholic church, while welcoming the
measure in principle, expressed doubts about the drafting of the
legislation, as have Church of England bishops. A Church of England
spokesman said: "We regard the test of stirring up hatred to be a strong
one which would be unlikely to penalise preachers or comedians going
about their normal business. However, we wish to be reassured that the
formulation of the offence will distinguish clearly between words and
actions which incite hatred and expressions of opinion which are merely
controversial or offensive."

During yesterday's Lords debate the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord
Carey said that it "threatens civil liberties".

"I am troubled by the bill before us and feel that rather than
strengthening the social fabric of our society it would weaken it. It has
the potential to drive a wedge between the Muslim community and the rest
of us," he said.

He was joined in opposing the measure by the Bishop of Winchester and the
former Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay, who questioned its failure to define
religious belief.

But the lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, told the upper house that "the
bill will not have the impact on freedom of speech which opponents say it
will. Incitement to religious hatred represents a gap in the criminal law
and it is right that it be filled."

Most of the Christian running against the bill has been made by
evangelical groups.

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