Following my criticism of the National Secular Society as an essentially deceitful organisation (here), it’s interesting to find myself in agreement with them for once.

Last August Shamso Miah, described as an unemployed 25 year-old and devout Muslim, left his mosque and went to the East Ham branch of Lloyds TSB, just a couple of hundred metres from Newham Town Hall. There he was involved in a ‘queue rage’ assault on Mohammad Furcan, hitting him three times and breaking his jaw.

Miah came before Cherie Booth QC at Inner London Crown Court on 27 January, and the wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair gave him a suspended six month sentence plus community service.

But it was her comments that caused a minor storm. According to last week’s Newham Recorder (here), she told Miah that her reason for suspending the jail term was ‘based on the fact that you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before’. She added: ‘You are a religious man and you know that this is unacceptable behaviour’.

But the fact that Miah is a ‘religious man’ (she mentioned it twice) should not of itself qualify him for special treatment. In the UK at least, religious and non-religious people are all equal before the law and what the NSS wittily calls ‘Cheria Law’, with its apparent bias in favour of people of faith, is un-nuanced and inappropriate.

However judges have to take individual and personal factors into account of course and those of previous good character may expect to receive a more lenient sentence than habitual criminals. A law-breaker who is normally embedded in a stable family within a close-knit local community may be less likely to re-offend than a solitary unattached inner-city dweller. And a man who is a leader, earning obscene sums of money from his fans and promoted as a role model for youth such as John Terry, may expect less sympathy in court than ordinary Joe Soap. And in sentencing, religious belief is as relevant as these other personal factors

But spiritual discernment is required to assess such belief as not all religions are the same, and it’s regrettable that most of our judges, like most of society, are religiously illiterate. For instance, as the Royal Navy shows (here), many authorities seem to think Satanism may be treated as the spiritual and moral equivalent of, say, Quakerism. And it’s rare for a member of the media commentariat to throw political correctness to the wind and draw a fair distinction between ‘harmless’ Christianity and ‘sinister’ Islam, as Andrew Brown did recently in the Guardian (here).

Different religions, like different foods, have different effects on their consumers. And good food is good for you while bad food ain’t. And as a case in point, it ought to be blindingly obvious even to our secularised authorities that Devil-worship – including the Admiralty-approved variety – certainly ain’t good for a soul, a ship’s crew or society.

So instead of making blanket catch-all assumptions about ‘religious people’, Ms Booth should have looked at Mr Miah’s particular faith – as well as his crime record, employment status, family and home background, education, etc – and its effect on him personally. Then she could make the right judgement about an appropriate sentence for this particular individual in respect of his particular crime.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 8:36 am and is filed under Crime, Legal system, Religious/Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.