Anatomy of a dispute

With the penalties set aside, the Court ordered the matter be sent back to the tribunal with the stipulation that it be heard by another judge and without the calling of further evidence. Furthermore, the Islamic Council of Victoria, which originally brought the complaint, was ordered to meet half the two pastors’ appeal costs, likely to have been a six figure sum.

In an important finding for the by now sullied reputation of Pastor Scot, the lead opinion of the Court of Appeal found the tribunal erred in its assessment of the 19 specific instances of supposed vilifying statements made by Pastor Scot, either by misconstruing Pastor Scot’s words or failing to take into account other ameliorating material presented in the seminar.

When the matter was listed for hearing in VCAT on June 22, 2007, the ICV requested the matter be mediated. A successful mediation resulted in the following VCAT press release:

Notwithstanding their differing views about the merits of the complaint made by the ICV, each of the ICV, Catch The Fire Ministries, Pastor Scot and Pastor Nalliah affirm and recognise the following:

1. the dignity and worth of every human being, irrespective of their religious faith, or the absence of religious faith;
2. the rights of each other, their communities, and all persons, to adhere to and express their own religious beliefs and to conduct their lives consistently with those beliefs;
3. the rights of each other, their communities and all persons, within the limits provided for by law, to robustly debate religion, including the right to criticise the religious belief of another, in a free, open and democratic society;
4. the value of friendship, respect and co-operation between Christians, Muslims and all people of other faiths; and
5. the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act forms part of the law of Victoria to which the rights referred to in paragraph 3 above are subject.

Some concluding observations

This five-year saga has proved beneficial to Pastor Danny Nalliah and his ministry. Among all who value free speech and religious liberty, as well as those concerned about the progress of Islam in the West, the two pastors will be remembered for their courage and persistence under fierce attack and for their fidelity to the Christian cause in a day of confusion and compromise. It took two recent non Anglo Saxon arrivals to Australia with real experience of Islam to make a stand for religious freedom.

In the end the pastors were vindicated: the courts required no apology, and the right to robustly debate religion, including the right to criticise the religious belief of another was upheld.

Whilst each pastor carried the burden of false accusation and anxiety, there was a particular cost for Pastor Daniel Scot. As a result of the case, the demand for his services as a teacher on Islam in Australia’s Bible Colleges dried up. It is to be hoped that his teaching ministry will once again be welcomed.

The ICV will be extremely disappointed with the outcome but relieved that the press either ignored the mediated outcome or else misrepresented it to their benefit.

Arguably, the ICV’s central concern in bringing its complaint was to use the religious vilification law to place Islam and its teaching as set out in the Koran and the Hadith in some privileged position whereby it could never be subjected to scrutiny and criticism. The incoherence of the Islamic texts and incompatibility with modernity means that they cannot withstand critical examination. Should this happen, the identity and coherence of their communities is threatened. For this reason, Muslims will not give up easily on this issue, though in this instance, thanks to the two pastors, they have failed.

This case also clearly demonstrated the dangers for the judiciary in taking sides in religious disputes. Some of Judge Higgins’s statements were breathtaking in their naivety and ignorance. Thus he asserted that the one billion adherents of Islam “regard the Koran as equivalent to the Bible; that it agrees substantially with Christian beliefs save for particular events”. He judged the shocking material cited from the Koran by Scot as “no longer relevant to the 21st century” - this is clearly contrary to the views of those Muslims who regard the Koran as dictated from the hand of Allah and therefore unalterable. Judge Higgins infamously found Scot to have called Muslims “demons”, a finding whose falsity was exposed in the Court of Appeal finding, but only after that initial finding was repeated around the world by the press.

But how are Australians, and Christians in particular, to made aware of the challenge and ambitions of Islam?

Christians presenting material on Islam do have a problem of how to best to approach the topic. The experience of Christians past and present under Islamic rule has been mostly bad, if not appallingly bad. While Islamic terrorists find no difficulty justifying their actions from Islamic texts, most Muslims (it is to be hoped) either don’t understand the jihadic teaching of the Koran or else choose to interpret it in a more benign fashion.