'I will gag the hate clerics': Cameron

[cronus]

'I will gag the hate clerics': Cameron

David Cameron is planning new powers to muzzle Islamic hate preachers accused of provoking terrorist outrages such as the killing of soldier Lee Rigby.
The Prime Minister wants to stop extremist clerics using schools, colleges, prisons and mosques to spread their ‘poison’ and is to head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force (TERFOR) made up of senior Ministers, MI5, police and moderate religious leaders.
The high-powered group will study a number of measures, including banning extremist clerics from being given public platforms to incite students, prisoners and other followers – and forcing mosque leaders to answer for ‘hate preachers’.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2UO5z1y5N


Fight terror with terfor cos it's a turf war.

[JimC]

The jihad preachers are nasty little arseholes, without a doubt, but it will be a legal minefield restricting things they say without restricting free speech in general...

[cronus]

The jihad preachers are nasty little arseholes, without a doubt, but it will be a legal minefield restricting things they say without restricting free speech in general...

We'll handle that mate, we invented the English language over here remember? Class one tribal movement happening.

[Warren Dew]

The jihad preachers are nasty little arseholes, without a doubt, but it will be a legal minefield restricting things they say without restricting free speech in general...

Since when does the UK care about free speech? They've got hate speech laws; might as well apply them evenhandedly.

[JimC]

The jihad preachers are nasty little arseholes, without a doubt, but it will be a legal minefield restricting things they say without restricting free speech in general...

Since when does the UK care about free speech? They've got hate speech laws; might as well apply them evenhandedly.

I took the news release to imply a ramping up of government action in this area. From what I can gather, the laws have been only intermittently and fairly weakly applied - they may try to change that, whereupon the shit may hit the fan...

[Warren Dew]

Arresting people for antimuslim Facebook posts doesn't seem like weak application of hate speech laws to me. Is there anything novel about Cameron's approach other than extending enforcement to hate speech from muslims, instead of only to hate speech targeted at muslims?

[JimC]

Arresting people for antimuslim Facebook posts doesn't seem like weak application of hate speech laws to me. Is there anything novel about Cameron's approach other than extending enforcement to hate speech from muslims, instead of only to hate speech targeted at muslims?

Weakly applied in the past, is what I was implying.

Right now, he may be trying to be the populist politician by applying an existing law more harshly, which will be a can of worms...

[MrJonno]

The jihad preachers are nasty little arseholes, without a doubt, but it will be a legal minefield restricting things they say without restricting free speech in general...

Since when does the UK care about free speech? They've got hate speech laws; might as well apply them evenhandedly.

No we don't tolerate unlimited 'free' speech just like every other country including the US.

Unlimited anything is the very definition of extremism

[cronus]

The jihad preachers are nasty little arseholes, without a doubt, but it will be a legal minefield restricting things they say without restricting free speech in general...

Since when does the UK care about free speech? They've got hate speech laws; might as well apply them evenhandedly.

No we don't tolerate unlimited 'free' speech just like every other country including the US.

Unlimited anything is the very definition of extremism

Well said my good man. Most everyone agrees that incitement to murder, rape or pillage is no different from crying fire in a crowded bar unless oil is involved.

[MrJonno]

Well said my good man. Most everyone agrees that incitement to murder, rape or pillage is no different from crying fire in a crowded bar unless oil is involved.

What you get in the US when something like that is said , a judge says 'it's not free speech and its ok to restrict' while in the UK we are just more honest about it and accept unlimited free speech is not desirable

Unrestricted freedoms of any sort are a very bad thing, a decent society will try to maximise choice of legal behaviour but its never unrestricted

[Pappa]

The jihad preachers are nasty little arseholes, without a doubt, but it will be a legal minefield restricting things they say without restricting free speech in general...

Since when does the UK care about free speech? They've got hate speech laws; might as well apply them evenhandedly.

We don't even need the hate speech laws. We've had "incitement to violence" on the books for ages. I'm sure that law would suffice if it was just applied.

[klr]

It's probably just a matter of time before someone (preferably in the House of Commons) points out that utterances by extremist Muslims - be they clerics or no - tend get treated far more lightly than anti-Muslim sentiments. The application of existing laws does indeed seem to be very unbalanced.

[Pappa]

It's probably just a matter of time before someone (preferably in the House of Commons) points out that utterances by extremist Muslims - be they clerics or no - tend get treated far more lightly than anti-Muslim sentiments. The application of existing laws does indeed seem to be very unbalanced.

Similarly, the EDL are not a banned group.

[Brian Peacock]

'I will gag the hate clerics': Cameron

David Cameron is planning new powers to muzzle Islamic hate preachers accused of provoking terrorist outrages such as the killing of soldier Lee Rigby.
The Prime Minister wants to stop extremist clerics using schools, colleges, prisons and mosques to spread their ‘poison’ and is to head a new Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force (TERFOR) made up of senior Ministers, MI5, police and moderate religious leaders.
The high-powered group will study a number of measures, including banning extremist clerics from being given public platforms to incite students, prisoners and other followers – and forcing mosque leaders to answer for ‘hate preachers’.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2UO5z1y5N


Fight terror with terfor cos it's a turf war.

That's a rather radical and extreme approach isn't it- giving yourself supreme powers to ban extreme views from the public square. It's almost as if we can't be trusted to make up our own mind while the government looks at the best way to drive these views underground.

We already have laws against hate speech and incitement so why does Cameron want to have a pseudo-legal framework allowing him to personally decide who can and cannot speak before they've even opened their mouth.

The man is an arse.

[Pappa]

Obviously this screams "knee-jerk".