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Open societies in which we try to settle our differences without violence have been a great human achievement. However, because freedom of speech is the prevailing view in Britain, we are not as alert to the risk of its overthrow as we should be. In A New Inquisition, Jon Gower Davies, former Head of the Religious Studies Department at the University of Newcastle, examines the new legal concept of religious hatred and provides striking examples from recent legal cases to reveal the oppressive and bizarre nature of judicial attempts to regulate such things. Hate legislation removes an increasing quantity of matters traditionally dealt with in civil society, to the domain of the state and the courts. Furthermore, the exercise of such legislation seems to create the very atmosphere it was designed to prevent - hatred. Jon Davies warns against developments which will make traditional public debates about religion and its critics impossible. He hopes for a British culture which validates a public seeking for religious truth and is more or less at ease with jokes and ribaldries, and he is profoundly ill at ease with censorship of them or with threats made against their authors. The freedom to speak our minds without fear or favour is worth fighting for. In A New Inquisition Jon Davies shows why the liberal majority needs to reassert the convention that the law should be used not as a weapon to suppress unpopular opinions, but rather as the protector of free speech.
About the Author
Jon Gower Davies retired from the University of Newcastle ten years ago. He lectured, first, in the Social Studies Department, and then in the Department of Religious Studies, of which he was Head. For 20 years he was a Labour Councillor on Newcastle City Council. He is the author and editor of books and articles on a wide range of topics, including Bonfires on the Ice: the multicultural harrying of Britain and In Search of the Moderate Muslim published by the Social Affairs Unit; and on attitudes to death and dying in the ancient religions of the world, published by Routledge. He has a particular interest in war and war memorials as definers of what he calls Eurochristianity . He was born in North Wales. From there, after the war, he went with his family to Kenya, then a British colony. He lived in Mombasa, went to school in Nairobi, and travelled widely through East Africa. After a short spell in the Kenya Regiment, a part of the British Army, he left for England to attend Oxford University. Two years in America, which included attending Brandeis University and participating in the Freedom Summer in Mississippi, ended with his return to England. Since 1965, he has lived in Newcastle upon Tyne with his wife Jean. They have three children, who now have children of their own. He is a communicant member of the Church of England.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
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This review is from: A New Inquisition (Paperback)
In this short book, 'The New Inquisition', Jon Gower Davies lays out the case against 'hate legislation' in general and 'religious hate' in particular. He details the case of a couple in Liverpool who ran a B&B. One morning they had a discussion about religion with a convert Muslim. The Muslim complained to the Police that the couple had abused her religion. The case ended in court with the couple facing criminal charges on the one hand, and as a bonus finding their livelihood endangered because pusillanimous bureaucrats in the NHS stopped using their B&B. Non of this should have happened in a secular free society, but it did. With some justification he broadens his attack to all hate legislation and also exposes the role of the media as self appointed judge and jury demonising those not in their favour.
While the religious hatred legislation applies to all religions, Islamists have created an environment where people are unwilling to challenge Islamic teaching or Islamic culture. Comedians don't tell jokes about Muslims they way they do about Christians, something that clearly rankles with Jon Davies. Fear has driven the ridicule that Islam is entitled to underground. That's dangerous. It is only secular societies that have to date allowed many faiths and races to co-exist, but the fundamentals of public freedom need to be protected from the demands of threatening or vociferous groups. In a mirror to John Stuart Mill, who argued that freedoms are limited not only by government but also by our friends and neighbours, Jon Davies argues that the historical accommodations reached with our friends and neighbours should be recognised and valued.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very sad book,
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This review is from: A New Inquisition (Paperback)
Increasingly religion and politics are being recombined as political society takes over more and more from civil society. Will the Thirty Years' War occur again?
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