I have been following the case of Australian Pastors Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah who were found guilty of 'religious vilification' of Islam in 2004 and ordered by the Court to apologise. The complaints made against him arose from a seminar the two pastors gave on Jihad in March 2003, the transcript of which is available here and is an excellent resource. In 2006 the State of Victoria Supreme Court overturned the verdict against him and ordered a retrial. Following a official talks at Offical pre-trial discussion the Islamic Council who brought the case have dropped their action, issuing a joint press-release affirming the rights to "robustly debate" and "criticise" religious beliefs.
The case has raised important issues of freedom of speech, not to mention the way in which the judge conducted the original trial. The case has cost the two ministers 500,000 Austrialian dollars and put them under a great deal of stress. In May this year (according to the Evangelical Times article) the 19 year-old nephew of Daniel's wife was kidnapped in Peshawar and held for 9 days before being released.
As with similar cases that have been brought against Christian ministers in the past, even when they are subsequently vindicated in court, to a large extent the damage has been done. Fewer people will now want to speak openly of the true nature of Islam for fear being subjected to the same treatment in the courts, so free speech and the freedom to spread the Gospel amongst Muslims in particular, is courtailed as the same law against "religious hatred" remains on the statute books in Australia. As Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for The Voice of the Martyrs put it succinctly:
In the eyes of the law, it's not a matter of whether or not these two men told the truth – they did – but whether someone felt bad about what they said. This is such a subjective standard that the law almost invites misguided cases like this one.
