Racial and Religious Hatred Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness can make that point when she makes her speech. I believe that the civil liberties of the individual in question matter. They may not be the civil liberties that she has talked about, but these civil liberties matter to him. Those civil liberties will be covered by the Bill. Of course, some people say that religion is different from race because you can opt in or out of it. Your race chooses you; you choose your religion. It is difficult to find a more illiberal sentiment. That is effectively saying that if you wish to avoid being abused by your religion, all you need to do is choose not to be religious. This is entirely the wrong way round. If you want to stop hateful abuse on the grounds of religion, you do not stop people being religious; you stop people being offensive to religious people. On the other hand, there are those who say the Muslim community believes the Bill to be a blasphemy law that will stop criticism of the Koran or Islam. If they believe that, they are wrong and they should be told so in the most uncompromising terms. This is not a blasphemy law by stealth. It will not stop religions being ridiculed or pilloried or made fun of in any way. But it will help to stop some people being abused because of what they believe. At its core, this is a Bill about fairness and responsibility. It is simply not fair that Jews and Sikhs are protected from racial abuse while Muslims can be subject to religious abuse. That unfairness cuts deep into the possibility of inclusiveness that must be the start of the process of healing and rebuilding our communities. But it is also about responsibility. We cannot and will not accept hateful words that incite terror. We cannot accept hateful abusive words that incite fear in people because of their religion either. We cannot demand responsibility from all equally unless we offer rights to all equally. This is the fundamental reason that this Bill is right, and why it is essentially liberal. A right as fundamental as this—the right not to be abused hatefully through race or religion—cannot be divisible or partial or limited. It exists for all of us, or it exists for none of us. That is the true spirit of liberal democracy. We will only turn strangers into friends if we offer to all what we now offer only to some. I urge this House to support the Bill.