This was once attempted in India, as Sita Ram Goel recounts in his excellent book The Calcutta Quran Petition. It is noteworthy that Muslim groups sought a specific exemption for the Qur’an from these religious hatred laws: a tacit admission that they know very well what is in the book, despite their public insistence that it is full of peace and tolerance.
Much of this Guardian article (thanks to Tom) is taken up with establishing how the Christian group contemplating this move is a nutty fringe group. But that is really beside the point, and obscures the real issue: whether or not the Qur’an incites Muslims to violence against unbelievers. In a sane world, it wouldn’t be nutty fringe groups bringing this up; it would be debated in Parliament — and the U.S. Senate.
A Protestant evangelical pressure group has warned that it will try to use the government’s racial and religious hatred law to prosecute bookshops selling the Qur’an for inciting religious hatred.
Christian Voice, a fringe fundamentalist group which first came to public prominence this year when it campaigned against the BBC’s broadcasting of Jerry Springer The Opera, was among the evangelical organisations taking part in a 1,000-strong demonstration against the bill outside parliament yesterday as the House of Lords held a second reading debate on the measure.
Its director, Stephen Green, said the organisation would consider taking out prosecutions against shops selling the Islamic holy book. He told the Guardian: “If the Qur’an is not hate speech, I don’t know what is. We will report staff who sell it. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that unbelievers must be killed.”