h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maybe the fairest thing to do in future if there is a big national event that we pull names out of a hat. So poppiers, edl, and other worthy groups get an equal chance to appear on telly...

>>Not according to the ex-soldier who presumably knows of people that
have been disabled or have lost their lives in defending Queen and
country but yes according to the Judge

To be fair,

a) the judge (magistrate, actually) wasn't making up the law as he went along. (definitely *not* something we'd expect of a lay magistrate!) but following a system of law which *does* make a distinction,

b) We *definitely* wouldn't want to leave the distinction to the defendant. Further, the law is entitled to question the purity of his motives. Was his protest, sincere as it surely was, directed at a small subset of poppy burners, or might he be judged to be generalising from a few poppy burners to 'Muslims'. If the former - why pick a symbol which does not uniquely apply to the former but all of the latter.

Oh - and the Queen and country card is, in this case, the last refuge of the scoundrel.

If the guy is traumatised and/or is having a hard time in civiian life, then I hope he finds help. But I personally know a small handful of people who've served in Iraq, Afghanistan or both. They do not burn Qu'rans.

>>the last refuge of the scoundrel.<<

but what about lil' Jonny?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328703/Two-faces-Armistice-Day-Boy-brimming-pride-fanatics-burning-hate.html

Or Mr Buchanen whose blood started to boil?
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3455500/The-Sun-compares-poppy-burners-50-fine-to-other-cases.html

I sometimes think we have our tabloids to thank for keeping extremism at bay..they have a way of turning it all into pantomime..(good old British tradition)

Oh no he didn't!

Oh yes he did!

""Poppy burners denied protest rights during the Royal Wedding:

"Scotland Yard says it has rejected an application by a radical
Islamist group to protest outside Westminster Abbey on royal wedding
day. ""

they should be given permission!, but, one word should be changed

delete abbey/ insert cathedral........its about 3/4 of a mile further along the road.....

Oh the Catholic joint..

I refer m&#39;learned gentleperson to post 142. It is not for the defendant to determine what loopholes are allowable in the law of racial aggravation.

Do you see that there are two different laws at play? This is the fundamental point: the laws of racial aggravation are intended to protect racial/religious groups, including Muslims, and especially the many, many Muslims who are unconnected with poppy burning. It is generally agreed within society that it is A Bad Thing to stir up hatred racial/religious groups, hence the specific law. And as a general principle of law, &#39;It&#39;s not what I meant to do&#39; is no excuse.

My, doesn&#39;t that Sun story have a nasty stink of &#39;It&#39;s one law for them&#39;? It&#39;s as if it were a bad idea to have specific laws against turning the expression of a grievance against specific people into unfocused mayhem which might harm whole a whole group. Granted, the grievance against the poppy burners was legitimate - but they had already been prosecuted. Shouldn&#39;t we also applaud the law for protecting the innocent against the random acts of idiots? And I thought The Sun was in favour of Laura Norda.

Ed come on..the average Brit..Muslim or whatever Brit, doesn't think to the nth degree about this stuff..they just want to get on with their neighbours despite differences..think that extremists are a bit stupid..and some funny..and yes have a few prejudices etc..I'd put good money on it that the vast majority of British Muslims would think it a bit silly that a poppy burner got £50 fine...and a Koran burner got 70 days in the slammer. They probably feel quite embarrassed that that silly old duffer imposed such a sentence in comparison to the poppy nutters.

For christs sakes the average person wants equality and get on with their lives...not bother themselves with what eccentrics do.

thats the one, s

I agree up to a point, Effers. The best way to deal with provocateurs is sometimes to ignore them.

But as far as clearly defined laws go - surely there are limits? I mean...to march into a library, take a book, set fire to it and wave it around? I think the legal tem for that is ~Bleedin&#39; asking for it.~ If that kind of case isn&#39;t prosecuted, what has to happen before the law steps in? And if we accept the need for laws of racial aggravation (and I think we should!) we must accept that sometimes they will lead to prosecution, hence the high tariff in this case relative to the poppy-burning one.

I&#39;m afraid I&#39;m sceptical of your usual ~We jolly Brits will sort it out~ logic.

Monkey: Yes I understand the point being made - Burning the Quran
comes under religious insensitivity whilst burning poppys come under
national insensitivity. However it is difficult to compare levels
of distress as for many the poppy represents their dead love ones,
and for others it gives them a sense of identity.

Actually, though...my hunch in this case is that the convicted may &#39;have problems&#39;. After all, it was a spectacularly stupid crime. Sadly, prison is often the only gateway for such people to get help. They *should* get help by other means, but they don&#39;t. So ~tout bien qui finit bien~. Sadly.

What stinks, though, is the media using a case like this to feed a pre-existing agenda. I can stand on many a street corner in Glasgow and hear the ravings of the demented. But I wouldn&#39;t dream of writing them down and publishing them as the basis of a cause celebre.

so if you want to burn a ko-ran

burn a tora and a bible at the same time and then they can't get you on discrimination

I find myself of multiple minds on this subject:


As I've mentioned before, I find the very idea of burning a book -- what ever the book -- to be so fraught with historical baggage as to make it unconscionable

and

burning a copy of a translation of the Quran strikes me as a rather unpleasant combination of cheap sensationalism and hateful incitement (together with the historical baggage of book-burning)

and

as someone who at the moment has on public display a number of art works which intentionally recast the symbol of a person nailed to a tree in ways quite untraditional (although quite conventional, really) I can't help but wonder if there is any difference in moral altitude between the burning of a poppy or a copy of a translation of the Quran as a protest on the one hand, and, on the other, the calculated and potentially blasphemous reinterpretation of the crucifixion for monetary gain -- I mean, as artistic expression.()

I mean, for example, Lady Gaga is getting all sorts of attention (following in Madonna's footsteps) for her new thing where she portrays herself as Mary Magdalene or some such. As it is, her song is 'free expression' and 'art' and 'a commercial product', etc. But if she were a survivor of abuse at the hands of a priest and did the same thing in a public place as a protest against the Vatican and Catholicism, would it still be art, or would it be incitement? If this British soldier had burned the Quran in an a (properly ventilated) gallery as a piece of performance art, would he have been charged?

When I brought my pieces into the gallery for the reinterpreted Cross exhibition, the Director was quite excited because all of the submissions except for mine had been very tame and inoffensive (not that I consider my pieces to be particularly edgy). I asked him if he was going to call for pictures of Mohammed next year. The intention of the exhibition *was* to stir controversy and so increase attention. I suppose stirring up Christian controversy was considered safe.

But, is the sort of self-promotion-through-offence really much different from burning poppies or books (or floating a crucifix in urine and taking a picture of it)?

I don't completely know what to think about the issue, but I don't like the idea of burning books.

And a God Delusion, and a God IS Not Great just to be really inclusive.

PZ Myers did a nice inclusive 'desecratin' during wafer-gate in the US.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/the_great_desecration.php

Long page - picture some way down it. WOrth a read.

>We jolly Brits will sort it out~ logic.<

Seems to work bloody well in my community.

>to march into a library, take a book, set fire to it and wave it around?<

Really Ed I'm quite amazed sometimes that you have so little imagination to think that the average Brit Muslim cares anymore about it, than the average Anglo Saxon did about the poppy thing. Yes both maybe deeply angered and contemptuos..but don't need the Law to send anyone to prison for it. That's ridiculous.

I'm starting to think that you too, see British Muslims as some separate species...just like that judge who imposed such a ludicrous sentence.

>> Burning the Quran
comes under religious insensitivity whilst burning poppys come under
national insensitivity.

No...this is about 180 degrees from my point. My point is that the Qu&#39;ran, as a symbol, denotes all Muslims and burning it is just as a riposte to a small number of poppy burners, but something which is bound to incite ill feeling and harm against Muslims as a whole. Not mere insensitivity but an act likely to incite harm. Please. I hoped I&#39;d explained that clearly enough by now.

In legal terms, the distinction is between punching someone in the face because you don&#39;t like his face and punching him in the face because you don&#39;t like his brown face. As a society we (most of us) believe that singling out whole groups of people for attack is A Bad Thing - more than the inevitable attacks on individuals that will always happen.

Poppy burning, then, is somewhat different to Qu&#39;ran burning. The offence may be similar - a punch in the face hurts whatever the reason - but we are guarding particularly against offences that may escalate and take in whole groups of people: hate crimes need to be nipped in the bud.

Perhaps there should also be stronger laws against national offence. I&#39;d be cautious about this. How far would we want to take it? Making underwear out of the Union Flag? Criticising the government? Sadly, we have to accept some things as fair comment. *Not poppy burning, though*: that was prosecuted.

Frs:

>>Really Ed I&#39;m quite amazed sometimes that you have so little imagination to think that the average Brit Muslim..etc

And where did I say that. *But* I hope that we all, Muslim and Anglo-Saxon alike, agree that we live within the framework of the law. We don&#39;t make things up as we go along. We don&#39;t just muddle through. Sometimes the law must be act through its own agency, with the Procurator Fiscal (or, in your jurisdiction, the DPP) being bothered on our behalf.




Especially when library property is involved.

And at least the poppy burners will have donated to The British Legion.