Dogsfightatbankstown takes a look at a recent ruling in Australia that has sent a chill through churches.

An evangelical Christian ministry accused of inciting hatred of Muslims and their beliefs may be ordered to pay damages for breaching Victoria’s racial and religious tolerance laws.

In a landmark ruling, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) today found the Catch the Fire Ministries had vilified Muslims.

It also criticised the ministry’s pastor Danny Nalliah, and speaker Daniel Scot, over a March 2002 seminar in Melbourne and several articles in the church’s newsletter that attacked Islam.

The case was the first to be heard by VCAT since the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act took effect in Victoria at the start of 2002.

In the decision handed down today, Judge Michael Higgins found in favour of the Islamic Council of Victoria, which took the action against Catch the Fire.

Judge Higgins found Catch the Fire and Mr Scot had breached section eight of the Religious and Racial Tolerance Act.

Dogfightatbankstown looks closely at the ruling and compares with similar types of legislation in Germany.

Religious vilification laws are not just some hair-brained idea of some mythical ‘latte left’ or ‘elites’. They arise and are seen to be necessary because there is a measure of religious phobia in the community - predominantly in the form of Islamophobia or Christianophobia - which can and sometimes does lead to ridicule or incitement to hatred or violence. They don’t have to be reactive - as Costello suggests. They can be preventative, or even instructive: don’t try this at home.

Our current political leaders should take some responsibility for promoting such fears.

Political leaders aren’t going to take responsibility. Fear helps keep them in power. Like I said, the post looks at the issue in depth from legal, social and religious angles.

Christianophobia
I sometimes wonder who has this phobia, the christians or the non-christians.
I’d say both feed into it and far too many on any ’side’ revel in the resulting adversity.
David Warren makes a point in his latest column that I think is true.
When Parliament rules on same-sex ‘marriage’ there are going to be lawsuits.
And it is possible church charity status will make some lawyers rich and give litigants their 15 minutes of infamy.

And yet we also need to recognize the similarities, in persecutions large and small. For even where, as in the United States, they still form a majority, Christians are the targets of molestation that becomes ever more serious if it is not resisted. It ranges from the petty campaigns to remove everything from Christmas crèches to Salvation Army bell-ringers from all public places by the “politically correct”, to the fact Canadian churches are already bracing for the removal of their charitable status, as the legal weapon most likely to be used to force them to “sanctify” “gay” “marriages”.

And then again, that particular scenario may not happen. The Supreme Court ruling on was clear about religion and Warren doesn’t specify what churches are ‘bracing’ for the ‘removal’ of their charitable status. There aren’t always demons in the dustbunnies, but there will always be phobias.
via relapsed catholic