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

I don't know enough about Law to understand why such a sentence was imposed. I assumed like most convictions there is a degree of discretion on the part of the judge as to what punishment is given.

And of course the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to proceed with prosecuting the back garden BNP Koran burner.

I was always taught that it is most important that the Law is not seen to be an Ass..if we want to prevent public disorder. And I think most reasonable people might agree with that.

If it is now considered Law that to steal a religious book from a library and then burn it leads to 70 days in prison..I hope other people start doing the same to demonstrate the Law is a total Ass...

Frs:
>>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.

That part's tosh, obviously. Never mind the imputing bizarre motives to me - that's par for the course - but what about the magistrate?

Magistrates (even when, as in this case they are low-ranking judges sitting as stipendiaries) are tightly constrained by sentencing guidelines - far more so than judges in higher courts. Do you know what the sentencing guidelines were?

Granted, he also gave a stinging admonishment. But what should he have said, given the legal severity of the offence?

And possibly, just possibly his sentence and words will have reflected the facts of the case, of which we've only seen the briefest outline. Were you in court that day? What did the defendant have to say?




But then - jolly old British common sense tells us he was ludicrous, eh? Bahnd to be, innit!

>>I don't know enough about Law to understand why such a sentence was imposed


Bingo!


I should point out, though, that a) the works of Charles Dickens are *not* enacted in law and b) Beadle Bumble is portrayed not as a source of legal common sense but as a blithering, blustering fool.

Maybe the law *hasn't* been an ass. Maybe your understanding of the case is based on some knee jerk assumptions.

>>No...this is about 180 degrees from my point. My point is that the
Quran, 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'd explained that clearly enough by now.<<

In that case I think I overestimated your argument. Lets focus on the
actions.

a) A group of poppy burners is more than one Quran burner.
b) Burning the Quran is offensive to muslims (as a whole?).
c) Burning poppys on Armistice day is offensive to the British and
Commonwealth (as a whole?).

http://c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000gp4yYGyuikc/s/898/650/j007052631-names-of-the-dead-at-the-australian-war-memorial-australian-war-memorial-canberra.jpg

In the past public acts such as c) would have been considered
treachery punishable by hanging drawing and quartering. If the
poppy burners had been sent to Judge Jeffreys they would have
received more than a £50 pound fine.


Getting back to our ex-soldier; on one hand we have someone taking
one book from a British library and burning it, and on the other
hand we have government cutbacks that will result in half these
libraries being closed with many of the books ending up in the
incinerator.

>>..cutbacks that will result in half these libraries
being closed with many of the books ending up in the
incinerator. <<

Kinda puts this thread in perspective.
One book burns, many books burn.

Paper tends to do that.
And since human beings are:
a) masters of fire
b) quite destructive by nature
it is inevitable that books will burn.


~jwf~

As a follow up to my post 155 (which seems to have been missed in the frenzy), the gallery which is having the show I mentioned, in which I've taken part, has been displaying a number of the works online: http://www.visualartsalberta.blogspot.com/

Granted, this stuff is pretty tame (much tamer than the Director had hoped) but, is any of it out of line? Is it legitimate to try to attract gallery traffic by trying to stage a controversial exhibition? Is inciting controversy ever legitimate. Is it ever illegitimate? Is it okay to muck about with the Christian Cross, respectfully or otherwise? If it's okay to muck about with the Christian Cross, should it also be okay to muck about with the Muslim Book?


Personally, I have no problem with mucking about with Christian and Muslim and Hindu symbols but I would choose to do it with respect (even if some might see the result as blasphemous). As I said to my devoutly Roman Catholic (as much as Canadian Catholics are ever devout) neighbour this evening as we were discussing the recent extreme vandalism of a Ukrainian Catholic church in a nearby small town: 'I don't have a great deal of respect for any `particular religion, but I've got no use for that kind of stuff: vandalising churches, burning Koran's, pushing over tombstones . . .' and now I'll add poppy burners and cenotaph urinators to the list.

It's just good manners.


Now, whether good manners can or should be legislated is another issue.

Art? Or incitement to religious hatred?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13124769

A controversial photograph of a crucifix bathed in urine has been vandalised at an art museum in southern France, officials said.


Is it the job of the religious to decide what constitutes incitement, or the courts? The public revulsion at the poppy burning was immediate and apparent, what reaction was there to this guy's Koran burning? (serious question - I don't know if there was a reaction)

To my mind, both were carefully calculated acts intended to cause the deepest possible offence and to incite violence. The Islamist group are the same people that protested at a homecoming parade in Luton - an act which led directly to the formation of the EDL. The English Defence League's actions have in turn led to the creation of the Muslim Defence League... can we see where this is going? At what point do we say "Your protest is incitement to religious hatred"? The Islamist's goal is to start a religious war in this country and, in the words of their leader Anjem Choudry, to "see the black flag of Islam above 10 Downing Street".

Cause and effect

For what it's worth, swl, the work vandalised in France is specifically referenced in the 'didactic panel' of the exhibition in which I've taken part:

http://visualartsalberta.com/blog/?p=17514

And, in response to your question about who is responsible to determine religious incitement, I would say the courts. And Parliament. And the Public. In no particular order (and the same whether speaking of the UK or Canada, BTW).

maybe you could produce a painting as contraversial

Jesus the Hoser.......Eh!!



<

tarantoes

>>b) Burning the Quran is offensive to muslims (as a whole?).

I get it now. This is the part you haven&#39;t grasped. The prosecution wasn&#39;t on the grounds of offence or harm of the act per se, especial or otherwise, to Muslims, The concept of religious/racial aggravation i that offences must be specifically be detered lest they encourage repeat offences against the targeted group. That argument is harder to make for the poppy burners: the only repeat offenders are likely to be the burners themseves.

Any help?

Let;s go through my punching a brown face example again.

This does *not* harm everyone with a brown face and this is not why the law judges the singling out of brown faces for punching more harshly than punching any old face. We&#39;d be in a right old pickle if &#39;He was one of those brown-faced people&#39; were seen as an understandable motive. We want to deter this.

Similarly, burning a Qu&#39;ran may or may not offend one, a few, many or all Muslims, A fair few will probably be thinking &#39; Here we go again.&#39; (see, Frs, you *can&#39;t read my mind.). This is not the point. We still want to deter people from stirring up antipathy or actions against Muslims in spurious response to an act that the majority of them were not responsible for.

Incidentally, it&#39;s not at all unusual in law to consider societal consequences as well as objective harm. For example, theft from an employer is punished mor harshly than some other thefts, even where the sum stolen is identical. Where would we be if employees could not be trusted not to abscond with the petty cash?

swl&#39;s point about poppy burning leading to mayhem is a valid one.

But here we have a difficulty: how to single out certain political expressions as valid and others invalid? It&#39;s a genuinely difficult legal question and so far our collective view has been that we don&#39;t want to go anywhere near it.

After all - flying The Black Flag of Islam over No 10 may be a perfectly reasonable political ain, albeit not on I share, These religious types only have our best interests at heart.

It might be recognised though that Choudry and his Islamist group are conducting an orchestrated campaign with the explicit aim of stirring up racial and religious hatred. Each event on it's own may not amount to much, but taken as a whole...

Were this to be the case, there is ample legal precedent for outlawing his group.

Well,

Put it this way. Take, for example, someone that believed their mother had been turned into a fish finger, and I mean really believed. To the point of deep emotional connection to, and love for, said fish finger. Now you may poke fun at this person and make them the but of your jokes, or you may even try to point out their mistake. But what you don&#39;t do is take that fish finger and eat it to prove some kind of point, because that would hurt the persons feelings. No matter how wrong you think someone&#39;s beliefs are, you don&#39;t deliberately upset them because that&#39;s not being a good person, that&#39;s being a C@%#!

So is it wrong? That&#39;s not for me to say as right and wrong are entirely subjective. What I can say conclusively though is that it&#39;s likely that the people responsible for such acts are insensitive, testy idiots who are surely on a level of intelligence comparable to the people they have riled to the point of murder with their actions.

That&#39;s my view anyway.

The way I see it is that certainly, certain groups should be afforded special protection if other people start being violent towards them because of skin colour or religion etc.but not if it is just a question of a few freaks doing silly provocative things to get in the media they can have paltry fines or be ignored.

If the vast majority of British people can accept that the poppy burners are just a tiny minority of trouble makers, why is it also not assumed that the vast majority of British people can't also see that Koran burners are a tiny minority of trouble makers?

I prefer that the State should trust that all British citizens are equally capable of seeing that.

Your posts aren't being missed by me anhaga. Try being more provocative though if you want a response

I repeat ONCE AGAIN, with subtitles for the hard of thinking. It is not a matter of the hurt feelings that may or may not be caused by Qu&#39;ran burning and whether these can or should be shrugged off. It is the singling out of a religious group. There are good reasons to deter such things, and the law reflects this.

We jolly Brits may be able to shrug off religious offence. But we&#39;d be daft if we allowed divisions to be manufactured between segments of society. So we have a law against that.

This may not have been the worst case of this - possibly just one random eejit (although note that we don&#39;t have the full facts.) Nevertheless, it was *a* case, which given its blatantness, had to be prosecuted under the appropriate law.

If some people think the law showed itself to be an ass, perhaps they would be sensible to have a slightly deeper think about why we have such a law and why the justice system works as it does. It gets things wrong plenty of times, agreed. But in this case, on the basis of partial (in both senses) accounts, I don&#39;t think we can say that it was a priori an ass. Sometimes we need more than Good Olde British Common Sense. Sometimes we also have to think.

So have I got this right, NTM? You don't think British Muslims are capable of just ignoring someone stealing a book from a library and burning it?

The full force of the Law needs to be used in such a case..and the dreadful criminal needs to be locked up for a couple of months.

>>So have I got this right, NTM? You don&#39;t think British Muslims are capable of just ignoring someone stealing a book from a library and burning it?


I think they are - and I&#39;ve repeatedly made it plain that this is not the issue. I have also made it plain that personal feelings of offence are not the issue. Are you being obtuse on purpose or can you just not help it?

No I'm not being deliberately obtuse. I think the old duffer who, *within discretion*, imposed such a ludicrous punishment does no favours to race relations. I've said I don't fully understand the law that applies to this act.

It would be great if you could explain this law to me such that 70 days in prison needed to be handed out.

And yes I stand by my opinion that if this is the case, the law is an ass.

>We jolly Brits may be able to shrug off religious offence.<

Err Muslims are also jolly Brits as you like to describe *all* of us.