Far worse homophobia provoked no outcry. Why?
London – 7 June 2011
Peter Tatchell, Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation, writes:
Mohammed Hasnath, aged 18, has been convicted for posting homophobic stickers in London’s East End. The stickers declared the area a “Gay Free Zone” and advised: “Arise and warn…And fear Allah: Verily Allah is severe in punishment.”
http://tiny.cc/ujh3j
These stickers were wrong and clearly motivated by homophobic prejudice. Such prejudice – indeed all prejudice – needs to be challenged.
Disturbingly, it appears that Hasnath has fundamentalist sympathies. On his Facebook page he lists Sheikh Khalid Yasin as one of his interests: http://tiny.cc/hr9tf
Yasin is on record as abusing “homosexuals” and saying they should be put to death:
http://tiny.cc/a0rmr
There are, however, a number of troubling aspects to Hasnath’s conviction:
First, he was fined a mere £100. If the stickers had declared East London a Jewish, black, Catholic or Muslim free zone Hasnath would have been almost certainly convicted of a racially or religiously aggravated hate crime and jailed. Why the leniency? Why the double standards?
Second, Hasnath is an easy, convenient scapegoat. He was a lowly foot soldier. There is no evidence that he organised the Gay Free Zone campaign. The police have failed to apprehend the master-minds who produced the stickers and then distributed them to people like Hasnath. They’ve got away with it.
Third, he was convicted using a discredited, authoritarian law, Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which has been used repeatedly to suppress peaceful, legitimate protests by human rights defenders, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) campaigners.
This is what happened to members of OutRage! when six of us protested against 6,000 members the Islamist group, Hizb ut Tahrir, outside their mass rally at Wembley Arena in 1994.
http://tiny.cc/3xha3
They called for the killing of gays, apostates, Jews and unchaste women. They were not arrested but we were. Our crime? Displaying placards that condemned Hizb ut Tahrir’s incitement to murder. It was deemed that our placards offended the fundamentalists and might provoke them to violent reactions.
Section 5 is draconian and sweeping. It prohibits behaviour likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress”.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64
This law can be abused to criminalise almost any words or actions. Campaigns against religious homophobia, like the OutRage! protest at Wembley, have many times resulted in LGBT activists being arrested under Section 5 for causing distress to homophobes and their religious supporters. We should not be rejoicing that the court used against Hasnath a harsh law that has so often been used unjustly against us. There is other, more credible, legislation that could have been used to bring him to justice.
Fourth, the court’s ruling in the Hasnath case broadens the criminalising nature of Section 5. Well meaning District Judge Jeremy Coleman said: “I think you used these stickers deliberately to offend and distress people, you certainly succeeded in doing that….You have upset people and they deserve an apology, you are not entitled to behave in this way.”
The judge ruled that not only is causing distress a crime, but so is offending people and making them upset. Causing upset is far too low a threshold for criminalisation. Almost anything that anyone says or does has the potential to cause someone distress, upset or offence. Under Judge Coleman’s interpretation and application of the law, most of us are criminals. If we accept that causing upset is a crime, as he stated at the Hasnath hearing, we risk closing down free and open debate and criminalising all manner of dissenting opinions and alternative lifestyles.
The Hasnath case throws up several other important issues.
Freedom of expression is one of the most important of all human rights. It should be only restricted in extreme and very limited circumstances. The open exchange of ideas – including unpalatable ideas – is a hallmark of a free and democratic society. There is no right to be not distressed, upset or offended. Some of the most profound ideas in history – such as those of Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin – caused great outrage and offence in their time. While bigoted opinions should always be challenged, in most instances only explicit incitements to violence and damaging libels (such as false allegations of tax fraud or child abuse) should be criminalised.
Moreover, why did the Hasnath stickers provoke such uproar, when far worse homophobia in East London stirred hardly a murmur of protest from the LGBT community? I don’t recall any campaigns by gay groups or anti-fascist organisations in response to the wave of horrific queer-bashing attacks in East London. Surely actual physical violence – which left at least one gay man permanently disabled – is far worse than a few stickers? Where is the LGBT outcry over homophobic assaults?
Nor can I remember any protests when the East London Mosque / London Muslim Centre hosted a series of virulently homophobic speakers, including Uthman Lateef and Abdul Karim Hattim. The latter gave lecturers in which he invited young Muslims to “Spot the Fag.”
Watch here: http://tiny.cc/2pkg7
The East London Mosque / London Muslim Centre have never apologised for hosting these homophobic hate preachers and never given any assurances that they will not host them again in the future. Apart from OutRage!, no LGBT groups have publicly demanded that they do so. Why the silence from LGBT organisations that are supposedly dedicated to fighting homophobia?
Equally, there were no protests when Abdul Muhid openly incited the murder of gay people in East London and when the Crown Prosecution Service refused to bring him to trial. In my opinion, encouraging murder is many times more serious and dangerous than calling for a Gay Free Zone. But again, no protests by LGBT groups.
When OutRage! stood alone in challenging Muhid and the East London Mosque / London Muslim Centre we were denounced by some people as racists and Islamophobes. This is nonsense. We never attacked anyone because of their race or religion. We condemned their homophobia.
Such false, malicious allegations are having a chilling effect on some LGBT campaigners. They are terrified of being accused of racism or Islamophobia, even when such accusations are wholly untrue and unjustified. To avoid such accusations they shy away from robust responses to homophobia when it comes from religious and racial minorities. This silence is de facto collusion with homophobia.