Free Speech Union to launch legal challenge against ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ definition

The Free Speech Union is launching a legal challenge against the federal government’s latest definition of “anti-Muslim hostility”.

Christians have already reacted with concern to the definition, arguing that it may lead to the penalisation, not only 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 in addition to inhibiting freedom of speech, the definition serves to privilege Islam and Muslims above all other faiths and faith communities within the country, and that it’s going to come to function 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 might be weaponised to silence legitimate criticism and debate about Islam, Muslims, and Islamic practices and history,” he said. 

The founding father of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young of Acton, said, “This is probably the most serious threat to free speech the Government has provide you with thus far — the one area during which it’s achieving any success. If we don’t win this fight, tens of 1000’s of individuals a 12 months could lose their jobs on 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’s constitutionally illegal in that it essentially duplicates or overlaps with existing laws or bodies, similar to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The definition is non-statutory, but critics indicate that it’s going to likely be adopted by public bodies up and down the land.

Already concerns have been raised about how the brand new guidance could also be implemented after debate erupted over council guidance to varsities advising against asking children to attract pictures of Jesus, as this will not be permitted in Islam.

One advisory document reportedly states, “It could be very vital that the varsity understands this and can also be careful to not ask its students to breed images of Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed or other figures considered to be prophets in Islam. Some Muslim pupils may not wish to attract the human figure.”

Responding to the controversy, Christian writer Adrian Hilton said that “sharia censorship” is “now official in English state schools”.

“What irks me most about that is that as an alternative of issuing guidance for teachers to implement sharia censorship upon all children (of all faiths and none), school ought to be a secure place for Muslim children to get used to the indisputable fact that other religions depict their gods and prophets in art,” he said. 

“It should be about introducing them to Christian cultural norms, inculcating tolerance of other faith traditions; not making all conform to a specific Sunni Islamic belief.”

He questioned why the guidance appears to simply accept Islamic faith claims as valid, while not doing the identical for Christianity.

“This guidance refers simply to ‘Jesus’, but to ‘Prophet Mohammed’, as if that prophethood is uncontested. It is not even ‘Jesus Christ’, and one wonders if that is because in Islam Isa/Jesus will not be the Christ. That, after all, makes Mohammed a false prophet; an antichrist (cf 1Jn 2:22). The ‘sensitivity and awareness’ is unashamedly one-way: inclined to sharia,” he said.