The Legal Protection of Believers and Beliefs in the United Kingdom

The enactment of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 is the most recent legal mechanism developed to protect believers, religions/beliefs and religious feelings in the United Kingdom. Despite the recognition of a certain degree of overlap between the different categories, as pointed out by a number of commentators, this article proposes a broad distinction between legal devices which protect believers, on the one hand, and categories which safeguard beliefs and religious feelings, on the other. The common law offence of blasphemy is analysed, taking into consideration the response of both the UK courts and the European Court of Human Rights. The endorsement of the English law of blasphemy by Strasbourg is particularly relevant. Furthermore, this paper focuses on different instruments which throughout the last few decades have been articulated to protect faithful: religiously aggravated offences and the offence of incitement to religious hatred. Bearing in mind that they have been used as a pattern, racially aggravated offences and the offence of incitement to racial hatred have also been discussed for comparative purposes. This is one of the first studies which explores in depth a highly controversial statute and its impact remains to be seen.