Hold that thought: or go directly to jail

Wednesday February 20, 2008

People should be judged by what they do, not what they think, argues Tim Black

The quashing of the convictions this month of five young Muslims imprisoned for possessing what was deemed ‘extremist’ literature was a victory of sorts for liberty. But the continued existence of legislation that criminalises reading certain texts, of thinking certain thoughts, and the culture of self-censorship underpinning it, indicates the extent to which the freedom to think the wrong thing has been eroded.

Back in February 2006, Mohammed Irfan Raja, a callow 18-year-old from east London, caught a train to Bradford to meet up with four university students. This is pretty unremarkable in itself. Before doing so, however, he wrote a letter to his parents informing them he would see them again in ‘the highest reaches of heaven’. This, of course, was interpreted not as a pessimistic take on Network Rail, but what seemed like an aspiring jihadist’s dream of martyrdom.

His return home just three days later – an indication of the seriousness of his commitment to the jihad – allowed the police, having already gone through his bedroom at his worried parents’ behest, to interview Raja and then raid the houses of his four acquaintances. What they found was enough for custodial sentences of at least two years to be brought against all five.

But what exactly had the police found that was so incriminating? Agricultural amounts of fertiliser? An armoury? No, it was something much worse: they had found chatroom transcripts, jihadi songs and a fair few diatribes. In other words, texts the group had been mulling over, arguing about, and perhaps even singing.

As section 57 of the 2000 Terrorist Act states: “A person commits an offence if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.”

Intoxicated

At the time of sentencing the judge was in no doubt as to their guilt, declaring the young men “intoxicated by the extremist nature of the material each of [them] had collected, shared and discussed”. Their representatives retorted that they’d been imprisoned simply for harbouring radical thoughts.

Both sides are right. While the five had been imprisoned on the basis of what they thought and read, they were also undoubtedly intoxicated by it. It’s just that being intoxicated by an idea, being inspired to read more, maybe even find likeminded people to discuss the ideas with, is not something the state should be legislating against.

That it is rests upon the elision of thought and deed. Thinking about jihad, evidenced by reading about it, is enough for the powers that be to divine an intention to act, to wage war against the infidel. Such reasoning justifies both the prohibition and the preemptive arrest. The latter, just like the preemptive war, justifies itself insofar as it forestalls the inevitable act.

The problem with this logic is that there is nothing inevitable about the act. That you might not automatically read something inflammatory and head off to commit hari kari or to chop the regent’s head off is ignored. Reading about the decadence of the infidel, or writing in praise of The Living Martyrs, as the ‘lyrical terrorist’ Samina Malik did, no more makes someone a terrorist than reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover or writing in praise of Her Beautiful Flanks makes someone a sex attacker.

As the judiciary discovered upon quashing the convictions of the Bradford five, people should only be judged by what they do, not what they think.

Tim Black, staff writer at spiked, is speaking at the Manifesto Club’s “Thought Crime – from the Lyrical Terrorist to Beenie Man” event in London on Tuesday February 26. Full details:

www.manifestoclub.com/thoughtcrimenight