Catch the Fire Ministries has won an appeal against a ruling that it vilified or seriously ridiculed Victoria’s Muslims (Who are we Defending, Vilified not Vindicated) and the case will return to Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Does that mean they don’t hate muslims after all? Well the jury is still out - so to speak.
Some people in Christian circles have been hailing this as a great vindication for Catch the Fire Ministries, but the appeal was successful based on a technical question of interpreting legislation. The Court of Appeal did not decide whether the defendants had broken the law and VCAT could still find the defendants breached the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.
All three Supreme Court justices upheld the appeal, saying VCAT should decide the case again without hearing further evidence. Though differing to some degree in their reasons, their most consistent issue for upholding the appeal related to the interpretation of one phrase in the Act.

They said that because VCAT had not interpreted that phrase properly, it had focused on the motives of the defendants from Catch the Fire Ministries when it should have focused on the effect of their conduct on the audience who were potentially being incited to hate Muslims.

All three justices also agreed that the controversial legislation was constitutional.

Here is more of what they had to say:

Justice Nettle said that since Catch the Fire Ministries was in the contradictory position of appealing an interpretation of the Act that itself had adopted at the time of the original hearing “the Tribunal cannot be criticised for deciding the matter as it did.”

“… the way in which the appellants conducted their case below made the task for the Tribunal extraordinarily difficult and, in the circumstances, the fashion in which the Tribunal dealt with the matter is in my view worthy of high praise.” (paragraph 118)

Justice Ashley gave even more space to praising the Tribunal and Judge Higgins, while contrasting it with Catch the Fire Ministries’ conduct in this case:

“First, it is right to acknowledge the prodigious amount of work which was evidently undertaken by the learned County Court judge who, as Vice President, constituted the Tribunal. It is plain indeed from his reasons that the Tribunal’s task was made more difficult than it need have been by the manner in which the proceeding was conducted – for the most part, though not exclusively so, by the appellants.” (paragraph 120)

To give examples of what the Tribunal had to contend with from Catch the Fire Ministries, Ashley said “it seems clear from the Tribunal’s reasons that the appellants pursued a number of arguments which were fanciful” such as “Islam was not a religion”, “distribution of the Qur’an was illegal” and “’Victorian Muslims’ were not a relevant class of persons”(Paragraph 122).

While noting there were technical issues of interpreting the Act that meant the appeal must be allowed, he said “the Tribunal could bear no criticism in that connection”(Paragraph 124) because “the Tribunal should not be criticised for adopting a construction of the particular words … which seems not to have departed from submissions made at trial; and which did not depart from submissions made before this Court.” (Paragraph 127)

Justice Neave said the fact that the Catch the Fire Ministries’ teaching at its seminar was not “balanced” did not specifically relate to the issues that the Tribunal was required to address and “that it was unwise for the Tribunal to attempt to assess the theological accuracy of what was said at the Seminar” (paragraph 178)

“In my opinion however, the Tribunal’s discussion of the issue of ‘balance’ in the views expressed by Pastor Scot was not an irrelevant consideration, in determining whether (the Act) had been breached … It cannot be overlooked that religious vilification can involve the use of misleading statements about a particular religious belief … For that reason I do not think that the Tribunal erred in having some regard to questions of balance or accuracy, at the stage when it was considering whether the statements were likely to incite hatred or other relevant emotion.” (Paragraph 179)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 5:46 pm by just_nigel and is filed under religious vilification laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.