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The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, with the greatest of respect, "which art in Heaven" is 16th-century English, and "who art" is 17th-century English. It is a small point, which a historian who loves the prayer book can make.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I am most grateful to the right reverend Prelate, but on these temporal Benches I have certain advisors, such as the noble Lord, Lord Pilkington, an ex-canon, who was kind enough to get me text and verse that I could say both in Latin and in English on these subjects.
Be that as it may, my concern is the impact upon religion. I do not believe that it should be in the Bill. I do not believe that we should touch the law of blasphemy, because, after all, even Jesus was accused by the Jewish Sanhedrin of blasphemy. Blasphemy is a dangerous phrase to use, but we are talking about peoples' beliefs and not necessarily treading on their toes.
In the world today, there are around 6.5 billion people and 3.76 billion are monotheistthey believe in one god. But even their ideas of that god may be different, but each of the monotheist religions also have problems with blasphemy. Blasphemy also applies in the other religionsin the Hindu religion, too, and there have been some interesting matters recently where the Hindu religion complained that bikinis in America were blasphemous because they had pictures of Hindu gods upon them. When we move down that road, it is very worrying.
I ask your Lordships, if you want a little further education, go into the Library and search the Internet, as I did an hour or so ago, and tap in, "religious jokes". I did not dare go to the next phase after the first two simple jokes, but there are Pope jokes, Christian jokes, Jewish jokes and Hindu jokes, all of which would be blasphemous under the Bill. They would be written down, but how do you persecute them?
Surprisingly enough, religion is about love. I look at the knowledge that I have gained in my trading careerwhen I chaired the Government's Middle East trade committee for 12 years and I was lectured by every branch of Islam; I was also asked if, together with the Crown Agents, I could build the royal Islamic railway between Madinah and Mecca to help develop trade; I followed the Jewish world into trying hard to get people to walk across the Allenby Bridge from the
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Arab world into Israel, which they didand I have no fear of religion, only a love and respect for the knowledge that it brings.
We should recognise that most knowledge, most education and most training have passed through the religious world. It is not something to be afraid of and the best thing that we can possibly do is to encourage the Churches themselves to spread the word. If you sit down with a mullah, a Catholic, a Jew and a Protestant you will find no differences. Given I have sat in the catacombs in the Ukraine with a patriarch who had a rival patriarch put there by the KGB, or in Belarus or elsewhere, with holy men, I find that I do not know what holiness is, but those who enter the Church have a spirit.
In life, you always need three legs of equal length to be stable. I believe in Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Jesus was the spirit of god in Islam and the Koran, but there are things that disturb me, too. I say my prayers from time to time, but I have never done it in public, because I would be too embarrassed. But I am not embarrassed to see someone at the airport doing press-ups and working hard with his religion, regularly without fear or prejudice. All we are talking about is understanding. We should forget the law and promote understanding.
Lord Chan: My Lords, it is a formidable task for me to follow the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, but I shall try. There are many aspects of the Bill that I support. Like other noble Lords, I shall confine my remarks to Schedule 10, because I shall approach the issue from the viewpoint of ethnic minority groups who have contacted me. Most of them are Christian and share their faith with their peers who belong to other faith groups or to none. Clause 124 relates to Schedule 10 of the Bill which seeks to replace Part 3 of the Public Order Act 1986, Section 64 dealing with racial hatred offences, with one to cover hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds. I support that aim and it should be extended to protect groups of people who currently are not protected by racial hatred offences, such as followers of faiths, notably Muslims, and those with no belief in religion.
But there are some concerns relating to Schedule 10 on which I want to focus. In this regard, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General for meeting me and my noble friend Lady Cox to listen to our concerns about incitement to hatred on grounds of a person's religion.
My first concern relates to responsible free speech. The Government say that this legislation will not affect legitimate criticism, missionary activity or jokes about religion. But nothing is written in the Bill to guarantee that. Such exemptions should be written into the Bill, otherwise, when it becomes law, conscientious believers are likely to interpret legitimate criticism, missionary activity or jokes about their religion as incitement to hatred against them. As a member of the Press Complaints Commission, over the past three years I have seen an increasing number of complaints concerning criticism of, and jokes about, religion.
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The importance of ensuring responsible free speech in this legislation was clearly brought into focus in a letter that I received last week. It came from a minister of religion at a multicultural church in Rochdale. One in four of the congregation there is from a minority ethnic background. I quote from the letter:
"Our church is involved in distributing Christian literature to local households. Muslims in the area also send out Muslim literature. Although our literature is sensitively written for those from a Muslim background, two young policemen attempted to tell us it was a 'serious racial offence' to distribute it. They mentioned that the offence carried a seven year jail term.
One Muslim (not the direct recipient of the literature) had complained to the police. It was clear that the officers felt under pressure to find a way of stopping us. Only after making an official complaint via my solicitors did the police back down and admit the matter was handled insensitively by the junior officers. If we had stopped distributing the literature, as the police seemed to want, our freedom of religious expression would have been taken away.
If that can happen now, under the existing race laws, imagine what a new law on religion could do. Any law which specifically requires the police to consider the legitimacy of religious speech will cause trouble, and will set religious groups against one another".
One letter of this nature provides some proof that the worries of numerous people who have written to noble Lords about Schedule 10 are not theoretical. While the rights of religious groups excluded from the existing laws should be safeguarded, it appears to me that Schedule 10 may be open to misinterpretation.
The noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General has explained the high threshold that would be required before he would consent to a prosecution for hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds, thereby ensuring that the number of cases of vexatious litigation would be very small or non-existent. But complaints to local police would, and could, trigger investigations that could create chaos in the running of religious organisations and, in particularlike the people who have written to mefor those accused under the new legislation who are involved in the running of churches. As in the case of the church in Rochdale that I quoted, legal advice will be needed and expense will be incurred in challenging complaints and bringing about police intervention.
Vexatious complaints would follow any attempt at distributing religious literature to households of another religion. That is the anxiety arising in those in ethnic minority churches who evangelise among people belonging to other faithsfor example, those in south Asian churches who distribute Christian literature to south Asian Muslims and Hindus, and those from Chinese churches who regularly visit non-Christian Chinese people. In that context, I declare that I am an elder of the Liverpool Chinese Gospel Church. There are 200 Chinese Christian churches in the UK.
I venture the view that measures are necessary to ensure that the freedom of speech that we so greatly cherish and value should be protected in the Bill in regard, especially, to Schedule 10.
Finally, I have another concern that received media coverage recently. Some 3,000 Christians in the UK have chosen to convert from Islam. Some are like Mr Nissar Hussain, a Christian from Bradford,
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featured in the Times in February, who has experienced three years of active harassment amounting to persecution from local Muslims in his neighbourhood. His car and his home have been repeatedly vandalised. Mr Hussain and his wife were originally Muslims. Perhaps the Minister would tell us whether the only way of protecting the Hussains would be through Schedule 10. In conclusion, Clause 124 and Schedule 10, on balance, as drafted, will create as many problems as they are expected to solve.
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