LONDON: A brand new report by a UK suppose tank has warned that there’s a tacit blasphemy legislation working within the UK though blasphemy is authorized in Britain.
Anti-blasphemy legal guidelines nonetheless exist in lots of international locations, most notably in Pakistan the place blasphemy might be punishable by dying. Nevertheless, blasphemy legal guidelines had been abolished in England and Wales in 2008.
The Henry Jackson Society has recognized “extreme anti-blasphemy action” as a rising threat to the tenets of the UK’s liberal democratic system, together with freedom of speech and freedom of faith.
The report “Britain’s New Blasphemy Police? Understanding Islamist Anti-Blasphemy Action in the UK” discovered that some people and organisations within the UK, particularly these with hyperlinks to Pakistan, significantly to the Sunni Barelvi sect, maintain excessive anti-blasphemous views and are ready to resort to violence to defend Islam.
“Two organisations found to be frequently linked to anti-blasphemy action in the UK are Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and elements of the Khatme Nabuwwat movement,” the report stated, mentioning anti-blasphemy preachers from Pakistan and Bangladesh have been allowed to evangelise in Britain at establishments linked to anti-blasphemy motion.
It requires the UK authorities to contemplate proscribing sure organisations in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The report, written by Charlotte Littlewood, refers back to the incident in Batley in 2021 the place a instructor was suspended and compelled into hiding over a caricature; the incident in Wakefield the place a 14-year-old autistic non-Muslim boy dropped the Quran and obtained suspended from college and his household acquired dying threats, main his mom to vow to make her son analysis Islam; the movie “Lady of Heaven” which was cancelled by cinemas following large-scale protests by Muslims; a e book, “The Jewel of Medina”, that obtained pulled due to threats to the publishing home; and the homicide of Ahmadiyya Muslim Asad Shah in Glasgow in 2016.
The report criticises “some local councillors’” responses to anti-blasphemy incidents, saying “they have at times seemingly supported the anti-blasphemy action taken”.
It requires extra strong immigration screening on preachers, for an investigation into the instigators of the protests in Batley and Wakefield to determine hyperlinks to extremists overseas, and for the division of schooling to “prioritise the safety of staff and pupils and the ability to teach without censorship”.
“Accepting a tacit anti-blasphemy law is antithetical to our democratic values whilst also a threat to national security,” the report concludes.
