Home | Contact Us | Newsletters

Of greatest concern in Victoria, Australia has been the existence of anti-free-speech legislation on religious grounds. Enacted in 2001, a statute of this sort has been used as an instrument of persecution by ‘religious’ people such as a transgender witch, a paedophile Satanist who is currently arrested for prostituting and enslaving teenage girls, and an occultist society whose ‘religious’ book contains verses talking about the eating of human flesh, the sacrifice of a child, and the killing and torture of people.

Until now we have just one case already decided on the basis of this legislation. It is the case of two pastors who were found guilty of interpreting the Koran in a way that got “a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter”. On 22 June 2005, a judge announced that these pastors have to place a statement on their website and four big advertisements in leading newspapers, at the total cost of 70 thousand Australian dollars, saying that they vilified Muslims by reading directly from their religious book, the Koran. These advertisements will reach not just the 250 people who attended their seminar, but 2.5 million people.

The Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act (RRTA) considers that the truth of a statement cannot be relied upon as defence against cases of religious vilification. Thus a pastor was found guilty of vilification for daring to correctly affirm, during the course of a seminar, that the Koran treats women badly and says that a thief’s hand must be cut off for stealing. Although both things are indeed written in the Koran, the legislation states that the truth is not relevant and cannot be used as legal defence. Also, a person’s motive is regarded as irrelevant for the legislation.

This is a major attack on the rule-of-law tradition, which considers the truth a basic tool for a person’s defence in litigation. Actually, all civilized societies require the truth when a legal dispute arises. In criminalizing truth-telling, however, the legislation ‘vilifies’ truth and freedom of speech, a cardinal tenet in every democratic and truly tolerant society.

Curious but also quite revealing is the fact that the Victorian government has been steadfastly defending its vilification legislation. Indeed, the government seems very happy with the way this legislation is being used. A spokeswoman for the Labor Minister of Multicultural Affairs was found declaring that the religious vilification legislation is “working as it should and there’s nothing to suggest that this is a bad law”.

If the government of Victoria thinks the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act is working properly, it might be that the legislation is after all serving its political objectives. In reading the legislation, we find that one of its major objectives is the creation of ‘multicultural democracy’. However, it is not self-evident that multiculturalism helps to develop democracy. For instance, if ethnic groups decided to retain their language because of multiculturalism, then, it is quite fair to suggest that the democratic debate would be dramatically impoverished.

On the other hand, multiculturalists seem to ignore the fact that democracy is as much a cultural achievement as it is a legal one. Democracy is not just a matter of having a ‘good’ democratic constitution. A proper democratic culture is also fundamental for the long-term preservation of democracy. For example, if it was a certain cultural heritage that brought democracy and the rule of law into Australia, it is not totally sure that this country might preserve them if it eventually decides to reject its own culture on account of ‘multiculturalism’.

Unfortunately, it is not every culture that favours values such as democracy and the rule of law. For example, if popular elections were held today in certain countries of the Middle East, they would probably bring to power non-democratic groups. By appealing directly to their ethnic and religious loyalties, such groups would be very keen to deny basic rights for women and minority groups.

But the fact is that multiculturalism has been used in Western societies not just as a fair understanding of other cultures. Primarily, it has been used as a powerful weapon by a few social engineers in order to dismember traditional values and replace them by other and more recondite ones. In doing this, these social engineers may suggest that immigrants would agree with multiculturalism, although it is very clear that the real impetus for multiculturalist policies do not come from them, but from the local elite as well as the most powerful elements within ethnic groups.

One interesting aspect of multiculturalism is that ‘diversity’ means the plurality of cultures but not of personal choices. In fact, human beings are seen as organically integrated into their ethnic groups, and incited on account of government policy to always embrace their cultural values, and no matter if they are good or bad for themselves. Thus multiculturalism seems to deny the liberal democratic postulation that human beings should be primarily recognized as free individual citizens. As Dr. Mark Cooray explains:

“The democratic society is characterized by the absence of discrimination and the presence of individual freedom. In such a society, there is a cultural freedom and the freedom of conscience. An individual is free to engage in cultural activity by himself or in association with others. If one wishes to live in isolation, he may do so. But he also has freedom to intermingle and interact. What is not permissible in a truly free society is the imposition of rules of behaviour or the state sponsorship of culture. Culture belongs to the people and its destiny must remain in their hands”.

In placing the ‘freedom’ of ethnic groups above a person’s own freedom and choice, state-imposed multiculturalism becomes a collectivist ideology flirting with the racist argument that cultural practices are somehow genetically determined, or race-specific. This sort of state-imposed multiculturalism involves a sort of determinism where the human person is regarded as emotionally and psychologically connected with his or her ethnic group. Thus such multiculturalism can be indirectly reinforcing the myth that a person’s moral choices and character are predetermined by the colour of his or her skin and/or ancestry.

But if the government of Victoria insists that its vilification legislation on religious grounds has been working properly, so it might be that multiculturalism is based here on the dangerous assumption that ‘tolerance’ implies the silencing of any reasonable criticism. If so, the so-called ‘multicultural democracy’, as an objective explicitly mentioned by this anti-free-speech legislation, means, in practical terms, the gradual replacement of authentic democracy by a more disguised form of elected tyranny.

Member Organisation, World Council for Life and Family

NGO in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC of the UN