My thoughts on Suriyah Bi’s Guardian column

I will start this blog by outlining my single most controversial opinion.

I hold the opinion that Boris Johnson’s comment that women wearing the Burqa look like ‘letter boxes’ was mockery of religious dress, rather than a slander against a people. Therefore, we should treat his comments as if he suggested that it was ridiculous that nuns go around looking like penguins. Crass? Yeah a bit. Offensive? Of course to some. But acceptable within a free and open society? Certainly.

I bring this up because I have just read Suriyah Bi’s column in The Guardian which ran with the headline ‘Islamophobia from the likes of Boris Johnson must be punished — and this is how to do it’. Her article distils her report “Index of Islamophobia: Proposing an Enforcement and Prosecution Framework”, which was submitted to The Equality Act review.

Bi’s article outlines her ‘Islamophobia scorecard’. In her article, four incidents are examined and given a score for Islamophobia; ‘Boris Johnson’s infamous comments on burqa-wearing Muslim women as “letterboxes”, the distribution of violence-inducing “Punish a Muslim Day” letters, a headscarf being torn from a Muslim woman, and being called Shamima Begum in the workplace.’

The scorecard seems a little flawed. Boris Johnson’s ‘letter boxes’ comment received a 35/40 score in severity for Islamophobia, based on the four criteria — intensity, intention, impact and recklessness.

His comments scored 10/10 recklessness which I can accept, he was Foreign Secretary after all. On intensity and intention, his comment scored a seven and eight respectively. 7/10 for intensity? If Johnson’s comments are a 7/10 for intensity, then the distribution of “Punish a Muslim Day” leaflets, actual incitement to violence, must be a 9/10? 9/10 because space must be left for direct violence (her report actually gives the leaflet a 10/10). And if this leaflet is given 10/10, what scope is there to distinguish between incitement, a direct attack motivated by ethnic or religious hatred, and the severity of any individual physical attack? I bring this up to highlight the absurdity of giving Johnson’s comment 7/10 on the spectrum of hate crime.

If Johnson’s intensity is 7/10, what score do we provide for even minor or innocuous blasphemic comments? What sort of comment would warrant a 5/10? (5/10 is deemed worthy of prosecution under the Malicious Communications Act, according to Bi…). Moreover, Bi wants the Equality Act expanded so civil action can be brought over comments with the ‘intensity’ of 2/10 to 4/10.

Intention seems tricky to assess and define too. It’s tricky to judge intention without an expression of motivation. The score of 8/10 provided to Johnson suggests that it is overwhelmingly clear that his comments intended to ‘orchestrate’ — yep, that’s the term the writer uses — attacks on Muslims. If we suggest any blasphemy is ‘intended’ to ‘orchestrate’ faith-based attacks, any blasphemy can be accused of incitement.

The Public Order Act 1986 provide powers to ‘prosecute threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviours that causes, or is likely to cause, another person harassment, alarm or distress’. The Communications Act 2003 provides scope for prosecution for sending a message that is ‘grossly offensive over a public electronic communications network’.

Fortunately, these laws, to my knowledge, have not been interpreted in a manner to prosecute blasphemous comments or remarks, to Bi’s dismay.

While Suriyah Bi argues that Johnson’s comments fall foul of theMalicious Communications Act or The Defamation Act 2013m, I doubt that these claims would fly in court and she probably knows this, despite whatever her ‘high index score’ suggests.

That’s why Bi argues more that must be done if the courts are to be ‘equipped’ to bear down on Islamophobia. She says that the Equality Act must be updated to criminalise the ‘deliberate’ deployment of Islamophobia in print and media. She wants a specific offence of ‘Islamophobia’ — based on ‘community based definitions’, which might be code for the problematic APPG on British Muslim’s definition of Islamophobia. Islamophobia is an infamously tricky thing to define and if ill-defined can cover criticism or critique of articles of faith and not just prejudice and discrimination of a person due to their faith.

What struck me about this article was just how brazen it was. Bi is certainly too smart to directly use the term blasphemy or explicitly refer to blasphemy laws, but it would take an extremely lazy reader not to realise that this is what she is referring to.

It is clear that Bi wants current laws to be interpreted to prosecute blasphemous speech and she is left frustrated that the current legal landscape, using ‘outdated methods and systems’, currently prevents prosecution of blasphemy under criminal justice legislation.

The UK has litany of laws from the Malicious Communications Act, Public Order Act 1986, Crime and Disorder 1998 and Equality Act 2010, to prosecuted hate speech and discrimination based on a person’s race or religion. Much of what Bi outlined in her article can already be prosecuted under existing laws.

Pulling someone’s headscarf off is an assault, or an aggravated assault under Section 28 of the Crime and Disorder Act if it can be proven that the offence was motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility towards members of a racial or religious group. Calling a muslim woman a terrorist or Shamima Begum in the workplace would already fall under direct discrimination in the Equality Act. Persistently behaving in this way, would likely fall foul of Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 on harassment. If this comment is written, it may fall under the category of racially aggravated malicious communications under the Malicious Communications Act 1988.

Reader’s of this blog will need to consider whether they believe, like Bi, that blasphemous comments, like Johnson’s 7/10, or comments of an even milder blasphemic sentiment (2/10–6/10) should fall within the scope of equalities legislation and criminal justice legislation.

In my opinion, Bi’s policy recommendations would provide scope for blasphemy laws ‘by the back door’ and her article wasn’t even that subtle about it.

Her report was endorsed by Baroness Glenys Thornton, Labour’s shadow Spokesperson for Women & Equalities, Wera Hobhouse MP, Deirdre Brock MP, Naz Shah MP, Afzal Khan MP, Lord Wajid Khan, Baroness Pola Uddin, and her report was promoted in one of the UK’s leading liberal publications.

For those who are interested. Here are the policy recommendations from Suriyah Bi’s report.