Lindsay Mitchell
lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com
Am I a bad person?
Because I would not don the hijab. Ever. It’s not my culture, it has no meaning for me and while I accept someone else has reasons for wearing it, I don’t share them.
True tolerance for each other would be demonstrated through side- by- side wearing of the hijab and going bare-headed.
The Al Noor mosque people are star-struck by Jacinda and she is besotted by them, and their terrible personal tragedies.
The senseless and violent murders that took away their family and friends forever were an evil act and must be an agony to live with. Our shared humanity as parents, children, brothers and sisters, tells us that.
But the risk of a repeat will never be eliminated by introducing hate speech laws. It could even be aggravated.
Yet that is what Jacinda promised the Muslim advocates for such a law change today. Down in Christchurch. In her hijab.
In France judges have ruled against implementation of recently introduced hate speech laws finding they did in fact impinge on freedom of speech:
The court said this [tech regulation] created an incentive for risk-averse platforms to indiscriminately remove flagged content, whether or not it was clearly hate speech.
The law’s provisions “therefore infringe upon the exercise of freedom of expression and communication in a way that is not necessary, suitable, and proportionate,” the court said in a statement.
New Zealand is still a free country (I write, with many ‘buts’ bumping around in my brain). And we will need to fight to remain so. We must not change our laws to appease groups whose safety will not be improved by the process. The PM must not emotionally over-identify with one group at great cost to the other. They need to learn, along with every other citizen, that laws have limitations in terms of desired effect, and that tolerance and persuasion are far more powerful impulses.
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