Could Scotland’s hate crime bill make depictions of Mohammed illegal?

Charlie Hebdo’s decision to republish the Mohammed cartoons has the media a-fretting. Al-Jazeera called the illustrations ‘offensive’. The Daily Telegraph brands them ‘notorious’. For the BBC, they are ‘controversial’. I consider gunning down Parisian cartoonists in the middle of an editorial meeting somewhat controversial, but maybe I’m overly sensitive. The satirical magazine reissued the drawings to coincide with the trial of 14 suspects in connection with the 2015 terrorist attacks on Hebdo’s headquarters and a Jewish market. In all, 17 people were killed. 

France is putting those accused of involvement in the Charlie Hebdo killings in the dock but in Scotland it could soon be illustrators themselves facing trial. The Hate Crime Bill making its way through the Scottish Parliament will criminalise great tranches of speech and other expressive activity. There are two provisions in particular that seem likely to put anyone producing or publishing Hebdo-esque cartoons at risk of prosecution.

First is the creation of a new offence of ‘stirring up hatred’, which is committed when anyone ‘behaves in a threatening or abusive manner, or communicates threatening or abusive material to another person’ on the basis of ‘religion or, in the case of a social or cultural group, perceived religious affiliation’.