Jones' Mohammed trial would " trigger further violent protests in the Muslim world"

By Steve Hynd

Terry Jones, Koran Burner, is talking about a mock trial for Mohammed. The Arab news channel Al Arabiya puts it bluntly:

Such a move would trigger further violent protests in the Muslim world - even in more moderate Islamic states.

There's no way for the US legal system to stop Jones creating more backlash - which is his stated intention for doing all this - because it's mired in the 18th century by Constitution fetishism. A case in point is Andrew Exum's post on the Jones' affair today. He's quite happy for US soldiers to die to the very last man in defesne of Jones' hate free speech.

 But with respect to Terry Jones, we have to defend his right to burn the Quran to the last one of us, no matter how foolish he is and no matter how much havoc he creates.

... when the first U.S. soldier in Afghanistan dies because of the actions of Terry Jones, we can take comfort in that fact that he or she will not have died in vain. He or she will have died defending the very document he or she swore to protect in the first place.

Exum's post begins from the popular myth that the U.S. is "a nation founded by the political and religious dissidents of Mother Europe" rather than the truth - that most of the original settlers were madmen, criminals and psychopaths either fleeing justice or exiled by their governments. It then meanders illogically from America's sensible and ethically correct prescriptions that "protect a man�s freedom to worship God � or not worship God � as he pleases" to calling for Americans to die to the last of them for someone who doesn't believe in that freedom of religion. I've news for Exum - the first rule of human relations, be they ethics or anything else, is that when you refuse to play by the rules of the game yourself you give up the right to be treated according to the rules of the game.

There aren't many instances where the U.S. can learn from "old Europe", but this is one of them. Thanks to Andrej Matisak, a Slovak journalist, for doing the research and asking some British law profs how the UK would handle Jones. The UK has already refused entry to Jones, "for the public good", but if he tried his bigotry across the pond, according to David Mead, Senior Lecturer in Law, Director of Teaching & Learning at the University of East Anglia:

 Terry Jones would very likely be arrested in the UK, and then charged and prosecuted, if he decided to set fire to a copy of the Koran.

There is no specific crime in the UK of either flag burning, as there is in some countries (desecration of national or revered objects offences) or of destroying religious artefacts or objects of religious reverence. There are however at least two crimes which I suspect the Criminal Prosecution Service (the state�s prosecution agency) and the police would be considering.

The first is the very general and broad offence under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. This makes it an offence to use threatening, insulting or abusive words or behaviour in circumstances where it is likely that someone (a hypothetical bystander in fact is all that is needed) would be harassed, alarmed or distressed. It has been very widely interpreted by the police � perhaps less so recently � and I am sure would cover this sort of thing. A recent case is quite interesting. It involved a group of muslims staging a protest at a homecoming  parade, holding placards labelling members of the British forces in Afghanistan as murderers and baby killers.  They challenged their convictions arguing they had the right of free speech but the appeal court decided thay had exceeded the boundaries of legitimate criticism: see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12480509. Similarly, a muslim man who burnt poppies on Remembrance Day was convicted and fined �50 for the same offence: see http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2011/03/09/poppy-burning-free-speech-and-the-50-question/

This case makes an interesting contrast with the recent decision of the American Supreme Court Snyder v Phelps (2nd March 2011) where the right of virulently anti-gay religious adherents to protest at military funerals was upheld.

The other area where the law might play a role would be incitement to racial and religious hatred under the same Act, the Public Order Act 1986: there have been instances of it being use din exactly this way -  see e.g. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8020296/Six-arrested-in-Gateshead-over-Koran-burning.html and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-black-country-11835253.

Already, there's enough ill-will on America's double standards on democracy and individual rights in the Muslim world that the Financial Times can write "the �Arab spring� threatens to be a classic case of good news and bad news. The good news is that this is the Arab 1989. The bad news is that we are the Soviet Union". Imagine the outrage if Jones' trial of Mohammed goes ahead, after the US has already failed to stop his church burning a Koran  and when a Constitutional Amendment to ban the burning of the American flag has been gaining momentum since 1989 and only failed by one vote in 2006. Indeed, the world would be right in thinking Jones would have gained far more approbation at home if he'd burned the flag instead of a sacred book - and there certainly would have been no calls for US soldiers to die to the last man to prevent it.