Orders of the Day — Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:17 pm on 7 December 2004.

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Photo of Chris Bryant Chris Bryant Labour, Rhondda 5:17, 7 December 2004

My hon. Friend entices me into an area of theological debate in which Mr. Goodman and others might wish to participate. We might talk about prevenient grace and double predestination, to which my hon. Friend effectively referred when he mentioned Calvinism. However, now is probably not the time to debate such issues as you might call me to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Islamophobia is a serious issue that affects many communities, not only those with a large congregation of Muslims, in cities such as Bradford or in the east end of London, but those with small numbers of Muslims. Where there are only two or three Muslims in a community, they can often feel far more isolated and can be subject to quite sustained personal vilification and harassment on the basis partly of their colour, but often, too, of their religion. This country should not countenance that. Far from the accusation that the clause will be intolerant towards religious expression, I believe it to be a statement of Britain's inclusiveness and its acceptance and toleration of different faiths.

Islamophobia is sometimes deliberate and sometimes casual. It is a great shame that so few people in this country understand the basic tenets of Islam. Remarkably few of us, even in the House, properly understand what jihad is. We completely fail to understand it when we describe it as a crusade; the concept is very different from that.

It is a shame that most religious studies courses in our universities are entirely confessional and vocational, for all sorts of historical reasons. I am an external adviser for the Oxford MA degree in theology and it saddens me that, for that degree, although one can study many of the Calvinist teachers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, one is still unable to study many of the great Jewish or Islamic teachers. Only when we can turn that around will we have a chance of understanding Islam properly and of binding that community fully into the heart of British society.

We need to make a move because the existing loophole has been regularly and deliberately used by those who want to foster racial and religious unrest—those who dislike people who do not fit into their white perception of how Britain should be. I am talking primarily of the British National party but people in other organisations have deliberately used the loophole, too. Earlier, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend Fiona Mactaggart, referred to a BBC television programme that showed how the BNP are doing so.

Violence of any kind towards any person, whatever their religion, is obviously wrong. Setting fire to people's homes, attacking synagogues, gurdwaras or mosques, sending horrible literature or putting excrement through people's front doors because of their race or religion is wrong and it is already covered by the law. However, while we allow a culture of hatred towards different religions to exist in this country, we enable that violence to grow in society. That is the menace I want to prevent by bringing the clause into law.

Some false arguments have been made this afternoon. We have heard much of the argument that the clause will harm freedom of religious expression, yet half the time the piece of religious expression that people seem to want to have the freedom to exercise is the freedom to hate other people. That is so distant from my understanding of any religion that I have come across that I find it rather difficult to comprehend.

As we heard when we debated this matter the first time around in 2001, there is an argument that people should have the freedom to make the Westminster confession. The Westminster confession is robust in its attack on the Roman Catholic Church or the Catholic Church—or the whore of Babylon as it is referred to in some of the documentation that was produced at the time. I agree that people should have the right to make the Westminster confession. They should have a perfect right to criticise the views of the Pope and to disagree with Cardinal Ratzinger and the congregation for the doctrine of the faith. There are large areas of theological dispute that I could have with them, but it is not a limit to freedom of expression to say that one should not incite people to hate Catholics.

Similarly, in the 19th century, when Christmas trees came into fashion in this country, many Calvinists believed that they were a terrible thing and that Britain was going back to its pagan roots as well as adopting Catholic symbols because people were celebrating Christmas. Some people may argue forcefully that all such celebration is wrong, which is fine. What is unacceptable is then to argue that those people who have Christmas trees in their windows or who celebrate Christmas are lesser people in society than anyone else and to foster hatred against those people, because out of hatred comes violence. I believe that it is perfectly possible in law to draw a distinction between incitement to religious hatred and forcefully holding a different theological position.

Another argument that has been advanced this afternoon—by some hon. Members of considerable standing in the House, so I am slightly surprised—is that there is no need to prove the intent to incite religious hatred and that that goes a step further than the Public Order Act 1986. In fact, that Act contains no provision to prove intent to incite racial hatred. The provision relates to intent, to provoking a breach of the peace or to the likelihood of such a breach of the peace being created. There is an exact parallel with incitement to religious hatred.

The shadow Home Secretary said in a rather curious speech, which ended extremely abruptly, that the United Kingdom had always been tolerant of other religions. That is profoundly untrue. We do not need to take a great lesson in the religious history of the United Kingdom to know that the Jews in York and in many other parts of this country, such as the east end of London, have suffered serious attacks throughout the centuries. The United State of America was founded in large measure on the back of religious dissidents who left this country because they found it intolerant.