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RELIGIOUS CRIMINAL OFFENCES
In general criminal behaviour
which has a religious dimension is dealt with under the ordinary criminal law.
For example a Burglar who breaks into a Church and steals the Chalices would be
prosecuted for the crime of Burglary. The fact that his offence also involved
Sacrilege of a Church would not involve any separate charge. There are however
some specifically religious offences namely. Blasphemy and Blasphemous
Libel which were discussed in a 2003 House of Lords Report
Offences involving disorder in Churches or
Cemeteries and Religiously Aggravated
Offences. In 2006 a new offence of “Incitement to Religious Hatred” was
created..
Blasphemy
and Blasphemous Libel
Blasphemy was a
long established offence in English Common Law and in many other countries as
explained in a Brief History of Blasphemy., it
was abolished in England and Wales on the 8th July 2008 by s79 Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 following the
case of Green v Thompson [2007] EWHC 2785 (Admin) which was an
unsuccessful attempt to bring a private prosecution against the BBC for
broadcasting "Jerry Springer the Opera", therefore the following information is
now only of historical relevance.
In England, for
understandable historical reasons, the Blasphemy law applied to protection of
the Christian Religion in its Anglican (Church
of England) form. The crime of Blasphemy consisted of
“the publication (orally or, for libel, in writing) of
matter which vilifies or is contemptuous of or which denies the truth of the
Christian religion or the Bible or the Book of Common Prayer and which is
couched in indecent, scurrilous or offensive terms likely to shock and outrage
the feelings of the general body of Christian
believers”.
Being a
common law offence Blasphemy was only triable on indictment, ie before a jury,
in the Crown Court. The maximum penalty being imprisonment for life and/or a
fine.
Prosecutions for blasphemy have been rare in the twentieth century.
In Bowman
v Secular Society Ltd [1917] AC 406 the House of Lords held
that the gist of the crime of Blasphemy was not the words that were used rather
it was
“their
manner, their violence or ribaldry or, more fully stated, for their tendency to
endanger the peace then and there, to deprave public morality generally, to
shake the fabric of society, and to be a cause of civil
strife”
In R v. Gott [1922]
16 Cr.App.R. 87. a publisher was successfully prosecuted for
publishing a pamphlet that compared Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem
with ‘a circus clown on a donkey’. There were no further prosecutions until 1977
and the case of Whitehouse v Gay News Ltd and
Lemon [1979] 2 WLR 281 7 This was a private
prosecution brought against the editor and publisher of gay newspaper Gay News for publishing a poem which
described acts of sodomy and fellatio involving the body of Christ and suggested
that Christ had been involved in promiscuous homosexual activity during his
lifetime. The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction but revoked the sentences of
imprisonment on the editor remarking that it did not consider it an appropriate
case for a prison sentence
In the case of
Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary
Magistrate, ex parte Choudhury [1991] 1 QB
429 an attempt
was made to bring a private prosecution for Blasphemy against the author Salman
Rushdie following the publication of his book “The Satanic Verses”. It was
argued that the crime of Blasphemy should be extended by the courts to cover
Blasphemy against all religions including, with regard to Rushdie, Blasphemy
against the Muslim religion. The Court of Appeal however was not prepared to
extend an offence for which there had only been two prosecutions in 70 years and
which the Law Commission in 1985 had recommended should be abolished (Law Com.
No. 145). The court also noted a real practical difficulty in extending
Blasphemy to cover every religion.
'Since the
only mental element in the offence is the intention to publish the words
complained of, there would be a serious risk that the words might, unknown to
the author, scandalise and outrage some sect or religion'
In 1989 the British Board of Film
Classification (BBFC) denied a classification to the video of ‘Visions of
Ecstasy’ published by Redemption films on the ground that it was blasphemous.
The film told the story of St Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century nun who
experienced powerful ecstatic visions of Jesus. Nigel Wingrove of Redemption
Films made an application to the European Court of Human Rights claiming that
the ban breached Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. and was disproportionate. The Court
however dismissed the claim and accepted that the criminal law of Blasphemy, as
it was applied in England, did not infringe the right to freedom of expression
under Article 10. Wingrove v
UK (1996) 24 EHRR
Legal Advice and Representation, Training
and Education
Contact NEIL
ADDISON at Religion
Law