Irony overload

Some guy from the BNP has been charged with a 'public order offence' (notice the vagueness of that term) for something he did in his back garden. Not nude sunbathing, but rather burning a book. Not just any book, mind - that book.

"A statement from the Home Office said: "The government absolutely condemns the burning of the Qur'an. It is fundamentally offensive to the values of our pluralist and tolerant society."

Tolerant, but not that tolerant, it seems. The BNP may well lack a certain pluralism and tolerance, but so does that book. To claim that burning it, especially in a private place, is any kind of public order offence, you have to use the elliptical logic that someone else is going to over-react and that they are going to commit the offence, which stinks of being a special privilege bestowed by a cowardly state on one section of society. This would not apply to a Bible-burner, because it is assumed Christians can take it in their stride, which no doubt they can. It would not apply to communists over burning a copy of Das Kapital, or atheists if someone torched Dawkins' 'God Delusion'. It only applies to one group in society, who have officially been designated as having the thinnest of skins. The question is; are any muslims man enough to stand up and denounce the arrest, on the grounds that it's actually no big deal?

I won't hold my breath for that, but the case does draw attention to the merits of a written constitution. At least in America, a citizen can point to the Bill of Rights and say 'fuck you and your thin skin. Read Article One and kiss my arse.'