The Free Speech Union is launching a legal challenge against the government’s new definition of “anti-Muslim hostility”.
Christians have already reacted with concern to the definition, arguing that it could lead to the penalisation, not just of criticism of Islam, but even of sharing the gospel with Muslims. Other faith groups have also spoken against it.
It has also been suggested that as well as inhibiting freedom of speech, the definition serves to privilege Islam and Muslims above all other faiths and faith communities in the country, and that it will come to serve as a de facto Islamic blasphemy law.
Such concerns were echoed by the Free Speech Union, which said that the definition "amounts to a Muslim blasphemy law via the back door".
"The definition is vague and subjective, and will be weaponised to silence legitimate criticism and debate about Islam, Muslims, and Islamic practices and history," he said.
The founder of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young of Acton, said, “This is the most serious threat to free speech the Government has come up with so far — the only area in which it’s achieving any success. If we don’t win this fight, tens of thousands of people a year could lose their jobs at the say-so of a Labour-appointed ‘tsar’. It’s dystopian.”
The legal challenge will challenge the vague nature of the definition and argue that it is constitutionally unlawful in that it essentially duplicates or overlaps with existing legislation or bodies, such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The definition is non-statutory, but critics point out that it will likely be adopted by public bodies up and down the land.
Already concerns have been raised about how the new guidance may be implemented after debate erupted over council guidance to schools advising against asking children to draw pictures of Jesus, as this is not permitted in Islam.
One advisory document reportedly states, "It is very important that the school understands this and is also careful not to ask its students to reproduce images of Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed or other figures considered to be prophets in Islam. Some Muslim pupils may not wish to draw the human figure.”
Responding to the controversy, Christian author Adrian Hilton said that "sharia censorship" is "now official in English state schools".
“What irks me most about this is that instead of issuing guidance for teachers to enforce sharia censorship upon all children (of all faiths and none), school should be a safe place for Muslim children to get used to the fact that other religions depict their gods and prophets in art," he said.
"It ought to be about introducing them to Christian cultural norms, inculcating tolerance of other faith traditions; not making all conform to a particular Sunni Islamic belief.”
He questioned why the guidance appears to accept Islamic faith claims as valid, while not doing the same for Christianity.
“This guidance refers simply to ‘Jesus’, but to ‘Prophet Mohammed’, as though that prophethood is uncontested. It isn't even ‘Jesus Christ’, and one wonders if that's because in Islam Isa/Jesus is not the Christ. That, of course, makes Mohammed a false prophet; an antichrist (cf 1Jn 2:22). The ‘sensitivity and awareness’ is unashamedly one-way: inclined to sharia," he said.
