Thank you for the explanation.
But I still don’t see why telling the truth about Islam would be inciting religious hatred, or why moslems are allowed in who incite religious hatred (and violence) against non-moslems. Doesn’t that seem like a huge double standard?
The legal issue isn’t really ‘inciting religious hatred’. The issue is one of ‘public order’ - the potential for demonstrations to occur that have the potential to turn violent. In many cases, it isn’t the speaker that is the problem - it’s the people who might demonstrate because of what they say (whether in support of it or against it).
Personally I believe Britain’s current public order laws go way too far and have the effect of imposing unreasonable limitations on freedom of speech that are contrary to the principles of Common law. But that doesn’t allow the Home Secretary to ignore them. They are the law whether they should be or not. I want to see those laws changed - but part of the reason the UK has those laws is because of pressures from the ECHR that have the tendency to supersede the Common law. One of the reasons I want to see the UK out of the EU is because foreign conventions should not supersede the Common law within the UK and now there’s a better chance of that being corrected.
But May had to work within those laws.
Unfortunately the nature of the laws give special protection to religious speech that have been exploited by some Muslim ‘clerics’. It is a double standard, but it’s a double standard currently written into the laws.