It’s an outrage
Harry Taylor left some religion-mocking leaflets and cartoons in a “prayer room” at Liverpool airport. (Why does Liverpool airport have a “prayer room”?) For that he was charged with “three counts of causing religiously aggravated harassment” and convicted by a jury at Liverpool Crown Court. He was given a suspended six-month sentence and an Asbo forbidding him to carry anti-religious leaflets in public.
One of the posters Taylor left at the airport depicted a smiling crucified Christ next to an advert for a brand of “no nails” glue. In another, a cartoon depicted two Muslims holding a placard demanding equality with the caption: “Not for women or gays, obviously.” A third poster showed Islamic suicide bombers at the gates of paradise being told: “Stop, stop, we’ve run out of virgins”.
This is simply disgusting, and contemptible, and reactionary, and a scandal.
Asbos are the dumbest, most illiberal idea this government ever came up with. Taylor has been banned from doing something which is entirely legal. It’s not like he took a corpse to John Lennon airport.
And what the fuck is John Lennon Airport doing with a prayer room? They should either ditch the room or ditch the name.
Shocking! Does the UK have any equivalent of the American Civil Liberties Union that could take up this cause?
ASBOs aren’t neccessarily a bad idea, but this is an utterly ridiculous use of them. We need a written constitution with a strongly worded protection for freedom of expression.
No. The National Secular Society are excellent at getting the message out and at participating in the legislative process but aren’t case-by-case legal activists like the ACLU. Liberty would side with the prayer room users.
I understand the motivation behind them but they are illiberal and are procedurally suspect. This case demonstrates that, it’s not an exception.
Excuse my ignorance, but what is an Asbo?
If you believe I was referring to getting the prayer rooms demolished, was not. I was referring to the man who was appallingly silenced and punished by the courts. I wish someone would/could take up his case and appeal this bloody awful ruling in a way that would set some judicial precedent that would make it clear to English courts that they may not abridge speech this way.
An Asbo is an Anti-Social Behaviour Order.
I wonder if Index on Censorship is making any noise…Well it must be. Surely.
OB: “This is simply disgusting, and contemptible, and reactionary, and a scandal.”
Yes, on one level I agree with you, even though I haven’t any idea of the law on ‘religiously aggravated harrassment’. Never heard of it before.
But I have no trouble with reasonable laws against harrassment: that is, where someone deliberately and with intent goes out of his/her way to do something calculated to be objectionable for whatever reason to the targeted party.
The doors of temples, shrines, churches, mosques etc are generally left open, sometimes 24/7 so that all using them for their intended purpose may do so. As such they are easy targets for those who would use them otherwise. (One of my 1950s school friends whose father was a fierce Protestant told me with relish once how his old man had gone into a Catholic church when nobody was around and crapped on the carpet in front of the altar.)
As usual, we have to balance the right to free speech against the right not to be subjected to stuff we don’t want to hear, even though others may think that to be unreasonable.
I’d like to see a law against rap music. ;-)
The very name gives me the creeps.
Ian but it wasn’t a church or a mosque – it was a “prayer room” inside an airport. Yes it’s obnoxious to go inside for the sake of teasing it, but then it’s obnoxious to put “prayer rooms” in public transport facilities, too. And merely being obnoxious shouldn’t be a prosecutable crime, much less one that gets a six month sentence.
It’s unfortunate, but generally, a prayer room is the only quiet or silent space available in public places. Maybe they could rename it, “quiet room”, for those of us who need a refuge from pervasive noise and chatter.
‘Ian but it wasn’t a church or a mosque – it was a “prayer room” inside an airport.’
It’s a prayer room in an airport named after a guy who sang ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven’ and ‘I don’t believe in Jesus’.
And I, for one, don’t think the presence of a room in which people can say their prayers before boarding the plane sends out a reassuring message about air safety.
Shatterface: “And I, for one, don’t think the presence of a room in which people can say their prayers before boarding the plane sends out a reassuring message about air safety.”
Better to start worrying when the crew get on wearing parachutes. I’ve heard unconfirmed reports that it happens in some parts of the world.
OB: Yes it’s a grey area: a members only setup in a public facility. (Should the prayer room be classified as a club lounge? It’ s pre-flight, and in more than one sense.) They have chapels in some pulic hospitals also, and while it might not be technically illegal to counterproselytise in them, I for one would not regard it as being in very good taste.
Ian, sure, but the point is that “not in very good taste” should not be illegal, much less punishable by a six months sentence.
I attended the sentencing hearing at Liverpool Crown Court. See my opinion pieces on my own blog before and after.
Mr Taylor seemed like a perfectly rational individual who wanted to make a point. I seriously doubt whether he would have been punished so severely if he had left caricatures of Gordon Brown at Labour Party offices across the country.
Cracking site upgrade, Ophelia!
Ah did you, how interesting.
Thanks about the upgrade; it’s the work of Josh and Cam Larios.
NuLab has unfortunately adopted the American model of creating new criminal offenses and trying to lock up as many people as possible! One commenter at CiF said that they should just build a wall around the UK and then have an election to decide who’ll be the prison officers.
By the way, churches, mosques and so on are in Europe not generally left open, not even in the countryside.
IIRC there’s a statue of John Lennon at the airport itself, and there’s an inscription that says “Above us only sky”.
Ugh – £250 costs and 100 hours of unpaid work – the Independent didn’t even bother to mention that. That’s grotesque for a non-crime! And the judge harangued him for still not agreeing that he’d done anything wrong.
Ugh, ugh, ugh. At this rate I’ll be joining the armed militant ferocious wing of the Atheist Army soon.
Except that America has free speech and freedom of religion, unlike England. There would be an uproar here if the courts attempted anything even remotely like this.
An anti-social behaviour order? Then we should slap one on religion for fanning the flames of misogyny and homophobia, and hatred of non-believers.
Ophelia writes <i>At this rate I’ll be joining the armed militant ferocious wing of the Atheist Army soon.</i>
Ha!
If by armed you mean those militants atheists armed with mocking pamphlets about religious belief and are not afraid to ferociously distribute them, I think that ‘army’ is already headed to jail. We need Special Ops…
… like this gorgeous new web site!