Jasper and Mr Aly may be happy to have the state decide what we may say but I'm not. One of the most fundamental rights in a free society is freedom of conscience, and the right to act on your conscience, in particular to speak your mind. From freedom conscience therefore flows freedom of speech, and your right to say whatever you wish no matter how offensive other people might find it. That other people may vilify things you hold dear or say offensive things is the price of free speech, it is the price you pay to be able to speak your mind freely. Once vilification and deep offence is accepted as a basis for restricting free-speech there is no end to the justifications for restricting free-speech. Why not bring back blasphemy laws, or sedition laws, or anti- political vilification laws preventing vilification of political opponents? Logically Jasper and Mr Aly would have to accept all of these but I suspect somehow they wouldn't!

Sadly in Australia no such right of free speech exists, rather the State condescends to allow us to say a wide range of things, without accepting any absolute right of free speech. Our defamation laws are a hangover from the Middle Ages where protecting honour was more important than freedom or truth, rather than using these are the justification for further restrictions on what people can say, they should be swept away, along with vilification laws and any other restrictions.

Mr Aly and Jasper clearly have a low commitment to the values of a free society if they don't understand it is underpinned by freedom of conscience and therefore free-speech, that is, free from state restrictions. The Anti-religious vilification laws should be repealed, yes to free speech no to state-coantrolled speech!

Thank you once again Waleed Aly for injecting some badly needed common sense into this over-heated arena. From the very little we know publicly of the Judgment, it seems reasonable to assume that it was not the verses (per se) that caused the problem, but rather the "additional comment" that followed the quotation.

After all, what is the point of any public quotation, unless it is your intention (as the one quoting) to either let the quote speak for itself, or to add some "comment" to the quotation so as to assist your audience to reach the same appreciation and understanding as yourself. If that is not the case, what is the point of quoting?

In the absence of the published text of the Judgment, we have to assume that the very few comments we have from the Judge were directed not to the act of quoting from the Koran, but to what followed after. Now unless anyone is prepared to state publicly that the Judge was an idiot, we have to accept that he knew what he was talking about – and it sounds to me like he did. If the interpretation of the law managed to upset you , that’s too bad; better luck next time and be thankful that we have a legal system that works a whole lot better than in some other countries.

Now if any person believes that the Judge was ill-informed, badly advised, or just plain wrong, well, I guess that’s fair enough. But it defies logic to then leap from that to saying the legislation is “bad” based upon the outcome in this one case. The point I make here is quite simple, and of universal application: If you get booked for speeding, no matter how worthwhile your reasons, and later on a Judge does not believe you and this interpretation displeases you, will you then say the Road Traffic Act is a bad law?

As I said before, if the interpretation managed to get up your nose, that’s too bad.

Get over it!

Big Al - sorry I don't see how the Koranic verses started all of this. In my reading of the case, it has much more to do with calling Muslims rapists and terrorists. That's not me being obtuse. I don't know how much clearer you require me to say that.

That some Koranic verses were quoted along the way is neither here nore there. That was not the basis of the complaint and it was not the basis of the judgement. I don't see why you think it should be the basis of our discussion.

Geoffrey - at least you're consistent. You want to abolish all form of restriction of free speech, including defamation. Fine. I'm happy for you to hold that view.

I think though that it's worth noting that no society on Earth seems to agree. I know of no time or place where free speech has been totally unfettered. Even in the United States, with all its constitutional guarantees, it is limited to some extent.

I also know of no serious movement to do away with defamation laws. There is a lot of discussion about defamation law reform, but none about abolishing it altogether. Every legal system seems to realise that when certain unjustifiable things are said, and this causes damage to another, that person should be able to recover something for that damage.

Geoffrey, it's great that you're a free speech advocate. I just hope you realise that you are advocating something that has never existed. That's fine, as long as you don't say our free speech is being threatened, since according to your definition, we never had it to begin with.

Hmmm. It seems to me that the experience of the last 30 or so years is that legislation that aims to limit the circumstances in which groups and individuals FEEL insulted, devalued or whatever have led to a spiralling mess of restriction on public speech.

If I say that I fear GroupA will rape/pillage GroupB, given half a chance, I am expressing an opinion. If I then say that GroupB members should "pre-emptively defend" (isn't English great?) themselves against my hypothesised threat, I'm inciting disorder to the point of public violence.

There've been several comments on the limits to free speech in this thread. The limit which I have always subscribed to is the line between expression of opinion, however misguided, malicious or ignorant, and the (attempted) incitement to action.

The problem with trying to prohibit expression of opinion is that, as constantly demonstrated here, in Europe and USA, the prohibited opinions go underground and, without exposure to counter argument and/or public ridicule (in themselves expression of opinions), fester into malignant growths within society.

If my feelings are hurt that's my problem; if my physical, civil or economic well being is violated, THAT, to me, is a legal problem.

One more thing: Waleed's title includes the phrase "hate inducing vilification". This presupposes that the hate, or predisposition to hate, did not exist in the affected listener prior to the speech. In my experience, the types of comment discussed here tend to occur within like minded groups. There's some merit in appealing to the need for individuals in positions of (supposed) authority to exercise responsible discretion in their comments, however that in and of itself presupposes as real the authority of fantasists who believe they are speaking on behalf of a diety.

"That other people may vilify things you hold dear or say offensive things is the price of free speech, it is the price you pay to be able to speak your mind freely." Geofrey, the validity of this statement depends on who the "you" is. The secular society and media has a whole lot of new taboos, most of them more subtle than those covered by the "blasphemy laws" of our Christian past, placing bounds — supported or not by law — on what you can and what you cannot say publicly. I am not a lawyer, and would probably agree that the fewer defamation laws the better, nevertheless the words of Walter Lippman come to my mind: "The right to speak freely is one of the necessary means to the attainment of the truth. That, and not the subjective pleasure of utterance, is why freedom is a necessity in the good society ... But when the chaff of silliness, baseness, and deception is so voluminous that it submerges the kernels of truth, freedom of speech may produce such frivolity, or such mischief, that it cannot be preserved against the demand for a restoration of order or of decency. If there is a dividing line between liberty and licence, it is where freedom of speech is no longer respected as a procedure of the truth and becomes the unrestricted right to exploit the ignorance, and to incite to passions...” [“The Public Philosophy”, Little, Brown & Co., 1956]