The Deterioration of Free Speech

A VERY SCARY LAUGH
August 25, 2006 12:00am

ANDREW Bolt writes: He quoted the Koran in a way that caused laughter and we all know how dangerous laughing Christians are, don't we?

Let a top lawyer -- Debbie Mortimer, SC -- demonstrate why you should laugh at the Bracks Government's vilification laws.

Or, perhaps, why you should fear them instead.

Of course, Mortimer doesn't actually want you to laugh at these laws, or indeed to see them as an outrageous attack on your freedom to say what you think.

No, no, no. That wasn't her intention at all when she appeared before Victoria's Appeal Court on Monday.

Truth be told, she'd been hired by the Islamic Council of Victoria to justify these curbs on your free speech.

To be specific, she was there to ask the three appeal judges to dismiss an appeal by two Christian pastors, who were found guilty last year under these very laws of vilifying Muslims.

She wanted those judges to think it fine that pastors Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah were ordered by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal in December to place full-page advertisements in the papers admitting they had said allegedly bad things about Islam.

And she hoped they would approve VCAT's order that these two Pentecostal pastors not repeat what they truly thought about Islam or to even hint it -- to instead keep their mouths shut even in other states where people are still mercifully free to say what these pastors may not.

All this was Mortimer's brief and, whatever I may write here, the three independent-minded judges will no doubt decide for themselves on the evidence whether her case is strong.

But by now you must think these two pastors surely said something especially wicked to have been silenced so completely. Maybe Mortimer is on the side of justice.

All right, I won't hide from you the sordid truth.

VCAT's Justice Michael Higgins in December ruled that Scot in particular had broken the Government's vilification laws by quoting the Koran in a way that got "a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter".

And we all know how dangerous laughing Christians are, don't we? No wonder a complaint was abruptly lodged by three Muslim converts who'd monitored the church seminar at the request of a Muslim ICV official then working for the Equal Opportunity Commission.

In his judgment, Higgins listed 13 examples of how Scot had "made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct". And here is where this case gets surreal: at least eight of them involve Scot quoting the Koran -- and, I believe, quoting it accurately.

It's true, the Koran does indeed say men may "beat" their wives. It does indeed urge believers to "kill disbelievers where you find them". It really does call for thieves to have a hand chopped off.

Scot may have spoken too luridly for my taste and yours, but Higgins did not identify anything he said that was actually false, other than an immigration statistic. Oh, and Scot failed to quote a Koranic verse that said Allah actually was merciful, so there.

Instead, Higgins found Scot erred because he "failed to differentiate between Muslims throughout the world (and) preached a literal translation of the Koran and of Muslims' religious practices that was not mainstream".

And perhaps he's right. Perhaps he knows better than does Scot, who was born in Pakistan and has studied the Koran for years, what is mainstream Islamic teaching and what is not.

Indeed, the judge may understand Islam better than does even the Mufti of Australia himself, Sheik Taj Al-Din Al-Halali, who seems to feel it's a faith that entitles him to say September 11 attacks were "God's work against oppressors", suicide bombers are "heroes" and Muslims must "prove our manhood towards God" in a "war of infidels".

Will someone please inform the Mufti that his interpretation of Islam is contradicted by Justice Higgins, and he should take religious instruction from him? Or is it just possible that it's the judge's opinion of Islam that isn't so mainstream?

I guess the notion of what is authentic Muslim teaching is just a matter of opinion, after all, and it's just bad luck Scot's side of the argument has been ruled illegal, no matter how true it may be.

But perhaps you still find it hard to believe we really do now have laws that may lead a judge to stop a man from saying even what is true in a vital argument about faith.

You wouldn't be alone.

On Monday one of the appeal judges, Geoffrey Nettle, asked the ICV's counsel if Nalliah and Scot truly had been banned by the VCAT tribunal from repeating what they'd said -- even the bits that were true.

"Surely that (vilification law) can't justify restraining them from saying something that said by anyone else would be legal?" he asked.

"In the case of the (Catch the Fire) newsletter, for example, Pastor Nalliah says many churches have closed down. What's wrong with saying that?"

Replied Mortimer of the ICV: "The tribunal has found there is something wrong with saying it. Truth is not a defence, its irrelevant to contravention of the Act."

You read right. And the worst of it is that she's correct: under the Government's oppressive vilification laws, the truth of what you say is indeed irrelevant.

If you offend someone, even by speaking the plain truth about their faith, you may be in danger of being fined, jailed and silenced.

Scot and Nalliah, for instance, have suffered four years of litigation that has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and are now banned from telling us what they believe about Islam -- even those things that they know are true.

But if these men are victims of this unjust and divisive law then so are we all, because a country that bans truth gives licence to lies. And it is lies, not truth, that will harm us most.

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Remember, this article is two years old. What laws have been passed since? And, how long until stuff like this happens here...