“… in May 2004, following the receipt of complaints from members of the public, the CRE wrote to the West Yorkshire Police Constabulary to ask that it investigate the distribution of a BNP leaflet, ‘The Truth About Islam: Intolerance, Slaughter, Looting, Arson, Molestation of Women’, in Dewsbury where there is a sizeable Pakistani community, locally referred to as ‘the Muslims’.
“We received the following reply from the West Yorkshire branch of the CPS: ‘[T]he leaflet is quite clearly insulting and abusive and arguably, in its talk of war and crusades, threatening too. The stirring up of fear and hatred against Muslims is … a likely result of its publication given the strength of the language used. Muslims are not, however, a racial group … and the hatred stirred up could not therefore be defined as racial hatred … [I]t might be that evidence could be gathered to establish whether or not the term “Muslim” is generally understood to mean “Pakistani” or “Indian”. The difficulty in relation to this particular leaflet … is that [it states] “This problem is not a matter of race. Those Muslims oppressing and murdering infidels and women have included Arabs, Pakistanis, Black Nigerian and White Bosnians”. Given this specific statement it would not be possible to infer incitement to racial hatred’.”
The Commission for Racial Equality explains why it is necessary to extend the present laws against incitement to racial hatred to cover religious hatred.
Perhaps someone might explain this to James Jones and Joan Smith.