The Atheist Blogger

If there is anything to be said of the UK government’s actions on free speech this week, it is that they are consistent. First, they ban Geert Wilders, an elected politician in the Netherlands from entering the UK to show his film to the House of Lords (an event he was invited to I might add). Geert Wilders’ movie “Fitna” portrays the Qur’an as a book filled with hate, and argues that the teachings within it have encouraged followers to commit terrorism and violence towards women. All of his accusations are accurate. The Qur’an has many examples of both intolerance and violence in its pages, and this needs to be brought to attention of politicians if they are going to start making laws against “discrimination” of religions.

Secondly, the UK government announced today that the Westboro Baptist Church were banned from the UK. The group, known for protesting the funerals of dead soldiers and pro-gay events, had planned on coming to the UK to protest a play that was being performed. The play was about the torture and murder of a gay American student, and has been the target of the church before in the US. I wrote a blog post yesterday that argued for the right of the WBC to picket the event, on the ground of free speech. They weren’t telling people to go out and kill gay people (as Muslim clerics often preach) but instead they were preaching what the Bible says, that homosexuality is an “abomination”.

This is what angers me the most. That it is somehow “ok” to pick and choose what freedom of speech entails; that just because large amounts of Muslims believe that killing non-believers is a divine right, to reject that view and argue against it is a violation of religious freedom; that fringe groups wanting to express ideas cannot express them if they might somehow upset the status quo. Sure, what the WBC preach is hatred, but the fact that we recognise it as hatred is evidence enough that people are going to reject it and counter it with their own opinions. Banning such opinions isn’t going to make them go away, and I suspect that the “prohibition” effect will simply make their words louder and heard more often.

Freedom of speech has limits, it has to in order for it to work. The point is though, that any limits need to be kept to a minimum, and it can usually be kept to just one, namely, any speech that incites people to commit crimes. You can say you dislike  someone, or that you hate them for whatever reason, but as soon as you encourage people to harm them, or kill them, or commit crimes against them, you are stepping out of the boundaries of freedom of speech. It is for these reasons that I do not support banning the Bible or the Qur’an for their content, but rather make sure that the content can be critised in every medium available, and why I support the right of the WBC to say what they do about homosexuals, atheists, muslims, etc. As long as I have my right to say what I think in return, then we have no problems. It is when you suppress freedom of speech, as the UK government has done in the cases of Geert Wilders and the WBC, that the entire system becomes worthless. We might as well not have freedom of speech in this country if our government can decide what is and what is not acceptable on the fly as it appears they currently think they can do.