Maintaining Racial and Religious Freedom and Harmony

I remember reading an email update from the Lawyer’s Christian Fellowship (UK) a while ago (yes, I’m still a member) about their concerns with the new UK Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (RRHA). At the time, I thought nothing of it (still don’t) as I’m already back in Singapore (and didn’t see its relevance) and furthermore, I thought it was an overreaction (since it had not yet been passed/come into force).

The concern stems from the fact that the Act purports to cover everything from the everyday use of words and behaviour to the production of written and recorded material. Of course, it must be viewed as able to cause religious or racial hatred. Many Christians believed that this would mean the end of ‘witnessing’ or ‘evangelism’ as it was not inconceivable that people would be offended and/or incited to violence. I, however, thought (and still think) this was an exaggeration.

I do however think that this would be a great victory if the Act covered ‘Chick tracts’ – those cartoon tracts by Jack Chick – for which I can see no other purpose then to incite hatred (both of other religions and belief systems as well as of Christians – by non-Christians because of its endorsement). This, as far as I’m concerned, would definitely be a good thing, although, I’m sure, Chick tracts will get away with it yet again. I do not believe that a Christian necessarily has to cause offence in order to fulfil his obligation of evangelising. In fact, on the contrary, I have never seen success in evangelism through methods which ridicule and offend their listeners. This stems from basic human nature, if you do not show your listener any respect, neither will he show you any. You insult or ridicule someone, he won’t listen to what you have to say – you’re a bigot.

The UK Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006

Although religious freedom is already protected under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which was incorporated into UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), this piece of legislation purports to take it one step further. As can be observed through the name of these 2 pieces of legislation, Article 9 seeks to protect a human beings ‘right’ or ‘freedom’ to practice his own religion, while the new Act seeks to prevent others from inciting ‘hatred’ towards a person or group of people on the basis of their race or religious beliefs. In that sense, they are 2 quite different things.

One major difference between the protections under the ECHR, the HRA and the HHRA is that, while the ECHR and HRA gives a ‘person with standing’ the right to sue, the HHRA makes it a criminal offence to incite racial and/or religious hatred.

s29L:
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this Part is liable—
(a) on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years or a fine or both;
(b) on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both.

I guess the main concern is in the fact that the Act does not actually define what ‘hatred’ means – leading Christians to think that whatever they do will be caught under the Act and therefore prohibited. However, as mentioned above, I do not think that evangelism (if done the biblical way) would be caught under these provisions. Furthermore, the Act makes clear that it is not intended to prevent people from seeking to convert others to a particular belief nor stifle discussions about different belief systems, even if such interaction steeps to antipathy, dislike, ridicule or insult.

s29 J – Protection of freedom of expression:
Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.

Another concept that is left undefined is what constitutes a religion? The Act does provide a non-exhaustive list, and ironically accords atheists and humanists a degree of protection as well. It seems however left to judges to step up to give these ‘bones’ some ‘flesh’. Certainly where the line should be drawn will test the mettle of the courts and give lawyers a lot of work, as all new laws invariably do.

However, as I mentioned above, I do think that all this concern is an overreaction. This is because I believe that the main reason for enacting this Act is because of instances such as extremist Muslim clerics ‘mouthing off ‘ and preaching ‘hatred’ in Mosques across the UK – either preaching that its ok or right even to kill innocent people in the name of God (of course the majority of Muslims would reject such teachings as against Islam). With recent bombings in London as well as a number of foiled terrorist attacks, something had to be done to stop all this. As always ‘context is king’ and so we need to realise that it is not a threat to evangelism, but is extremely necessary in the current political and social climate in which we live.

The Christian response

So what should the Christian response be? Well, if one is really concerned about it, the first thing to be done is to re-examine the way that they evangelise. If you don’t want the possibility of being caught under the Act, notwithstanding the stated intention that the Act is not meant to curtail evangelism, then learn to do it properly – not with insult , ridicule or a judgmental spirit, but with humility, sincerity and sensitivity – give them the Gospel instead of attempting to ‘destroy’ their existing belief system (an exercise in futility if ever there was one!).

Singapore – Racial and Religious Harmony since 1960s/1970s

Perhaps another reason why I was rather unconcerned about this piece of legislation is that we already have laws in place in Singapore to protect religious freedom and harmony as well as racial harmony. Maybe the UK has learnt from Singapore on this point, especially since we have enjoyed religious freedom, religious harmony and racial harmony for so many years (in fact, many of us have never seen any turmoil or riots because of race or creed in our entire lifetimes). I suspect that the reason for our successes in this area, despite not having the ECHR and HRA, is the fact that we have legislation such as the Internal Security Act, the Sedition Act (racist bloggers Benjamin Koh and Nicholas Lim were both prosecuted under this Act), the Penal Code and the Undesirable Publications Act – all enacted in the 1960s and 1970s – as well as our placing and maintaining limits to the Freedom of Speech (some of the rationales and justifications of placing such limits are detailed in a previous entry).