"Hate speech" in Britain

A comment from Ireland

Let's put it this way, how fair is it that you can be arrested for using the word 'n*gger' in a tweet while Anjem Choudary openly boasts of sending hundreds of young men to kill British soldiers in Afghanistan and his followers carry placards with such cheery sentiments as 'behead those who insult Islam'?

And it's not just Britain he has his eye on – I remember debating Choudary in Dublin a few years back when he declared Ireland a worthy target for jihad because we let the Americans use Shannon as a stopover.

He also said that Irish gays and 'perverts' and atheists should all be subject to the punishments of that lovely Sharia law.

I remember being dismissed at the time as a racist and a bigot – I was genuinely shocked at just how patheticially accomodating the organisers were towards Choudray and his rabble. At the pre-debate meal, non-Muslims were expected to eat halal food and out of respect for the Muslim guests no wine was served, meaning that everyone else was expected to conform to Muslim dietary commands – under pain of being seen as 'intolerant' if they objected. I left and ate elsewhere.

In fact, when I said him and his followers were worthless savages who wanted to drag us back to the Stone Age, this was dismissed as hate speech which only 'demonised' Islam. In fact, one person there threatened to report me to the gardaí [police] for incitement to hatred.

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