Man gets scentenced to 70 days in prison for burning a Koran

When you say criminal damage can get you 3 months you mean items of lot more value and level of damage. Criminal damage to an individual book is not worth 3 months and I don't think ever would be without the additional factors.

The judge stated: Sitting at Carlisle Magistrates' Court, District Judge Gerald Chalk described it as a case of "theatrical bigotry".

"You went out to cause maximum publicity and to cause distress."

After sentencing, Insp Paul Marshall, of Cumbria Police, said: "This incident was highly unusual for Cumbria as we have such low levels of hate crime in the county."

So there was a hate crime aspect to this hence the long scentence. If there was no mention of the koran other than in the bbc report then fine but it being a koran made all the difference as shown by the police and judges statements. On another forum someone found (although I can't confirm) that is was 30 days for burning the stolen book given that he had past offences and 40 days for the hate crime aspect.

 

Criminal damage to anything below £5000 can carry a 3 month sentence. People have been charged with criminal damage for headbutting the inside of a Police car.

You can get 7 years IIRC for a religious hate crime.

Laws should be applied equally, I personally believe the more laws you create to "protect" groups of any sort the more you create division in society.

At the end of the day he was an arse, I do think sometimes people should be locked up for that alone.

 

You do mention offical sanctions for religious documents. That should be it. There should be something in place for other damages you could seek, but not hate crime. I think hate crimes the wrong term anyway... "Religion-focused crime" sounds much better and puts all the cloud worshipers into a nice basket of "You do something to another religious person and you're a criminal regardless", same as everyone else without giving them a raised level of themselves (superior).

Generally the problem is that all Muslims are thrown into the same pot of hate when people do things like this. They aren't all bad! Just that 0.001% that ruins it for the rest. Just because 100 fundermentalists decide to picket a rally of soldiers, doesn't mean we should go and bayonet them, infact quite the opposite, laugh and as someone said here a few months ago "Turn out backs and ignore them".

haha, very much so.

 

Exactly, is the guy Christian? Are all Christians arses like that? Is he just a white English guy? Are all white English guys like that?

No.

 

People happily stereotype don't they. I mean I joke and laugh about "hating everyone equally until proven otherwise" but tragically it's true. Saying that I do not discriminate against (except against the Dutch... Nexxo you dress wearing wooden shoe making fool I jest) other races, nationalities, religions etc... I make jokes, sure, but like I said, everyone to me is fair game.

I just think as a race we're bound to end up hating each other for slight differences for quite some time.

 

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. The wise person knows when to exercise restraint.

 

I'd say that freedom of speech should be about the only sacred thing, however,
1. I would never expect freedom of speech to be consequence free, for instance standing in the middle of London and shouting you’re going to stab all left handed midgets, I would expect the consequences of being watched carefully by the police and reticence in the selling of kitchen knives to me by shopkeepers. Same as If you going to insult someone’s mother, brother or sister, I'd expect you might walk away with a bruise or two.
2. Freedom of speech is not freedom of action.
3. This tool stole a book from a library with the express intent of burning it, that would be a public library, and hence a publicly owned book. If you’re going to burn a book, buy your own don't burn mine.

 

This is true, but should we legislate explicitly for a lack of wiseness? Lacking wisdom and actually doing something of real harm is very different.

The two issues are one of if we are going to have what are in effectively thought crimes then they shouldn't be so explicit to religion. Why does religion deserve/need any special protection that isn't available to secular society. This is hate is against a religion, I don't think religion or race are the only things you can hate. If this was a non religious book then there would be hate crime attached to it although it should be regarded the same if we go down that road.

The other is should we legislate for the levels of supposed offence people recieved. There is no way to quantify this or determine whether my offence to something is greater than anyone elses. Because of this anything that offends anybody could be regarded as a hate crime if someone else believes different. With this being the case how do you draw the line and if so where? Who determines the level of offence caused and what should be classed as worthy of a hate crime or not.

 

This. You are more than free to say whatever you'd like. However, I may just punch you in the face if I find it offensive enough... That doesn't make my actions justified in any way. Just the way things work though. We all have a breaking point. You shouldn't say something if you're not prepared to handle the reactions people may have to what you're saying.

And the only problem I have with this guys actions is that he stole a public book. That alone makes him a jerk and pretty much negates any impact he was hoping to make with his statement. That's not to say it hasn't had an impact on someone else though...


(I'm an extremely non-violent person btw.)

 

Just remember, people make a big deal of it, swearing at a white person will cause no upset to everybody, saying exactly the same thing to his black counterpart will for some reason, have everybody make a big deal out of it.

 

Thread hadn't updated, ignore.

 

TBH I think anybody who burns any book should be locked up. Seemed to be a favourite hobby of Hitlers.

Oh look, it took until page three until Hitler or Nazis were mentioned.

 

Page 2, post #26

 

You say this every time, and I just feel like you're ignoring the issue. You're not picking a side here, you're simply saying that people shouldn't burn religious books or whatever. We need to decide as a society how we're going to react if someone does though. You know as well as I that there is no way we can rely upon individual wisdom to maintain our society.

Goodness me yes! How could any non-fascist person not be?

 

Damn, late to the party again.

 

But why should the religious have a specialist layer of law for them. Hate comes in many forms not just of religion. I don't think there should be crimes in that form but if there are they need to be equally applied to all things that people take offence too which is the issue with trying to define what people take offence to in the beginning.

 

Many of the replies on here talk about limitations on free speech... we all have ideas about where the line should be drawn but those ideas are never going to be the same, and as soon as you outlaw something for one extremist minority you create a tool with which the innocent majority can be oppressed.

Someone has already mentioned all the terrorism stuff of the last decade, and that's a very good example. The Patriot act, for example, sought to strip away many rights of the individual in the name of freedom. Doublethink anyone?

If we all played dictator and made the rules as we saw fit we'd probably be happy ourselves, but we'd never create a system that's fair to everyone; we're all biased and prejudiced to some extent over something.

The bottom line is that people should be free to say whatever they like, and if that upsets someone then so be it. If something is so extreme that action needs to be taken against it then chances are it's already moved beyond just speech. For example, if someone expresses racist beliefs, then regardless of what we think of the sentiment itself, or of them for holding it, they should still be free to say it. If they go out burning crosses then you have cause to intervene. If they are harassing someone verbally or threatening people there is justification to stop them: free speech shouldn't be used to defend their actions and protect them. The problem, though, is that you need common sense to police things like that, and generally speaking common sense is something we're usually pretty bad at (particularly those in power). Common sense is not something you can legislate, and it too can be subjective: it's not something we can all simply agree on.

We either have free speech and accept that people will use it to say things we find abhorrent and violently disagree with, but maintain the right to speak freely ourselves, or we live in a society where we have no voice and political dissent becomes a crime.

 

i wiser person restrains on exercises

 

Quoted, for again saying what I wanted to say .