{"id":4891,"date":"2004-12-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/12\/23\/2004-12-23-australian-christians-ponder-consequences-of-court-decision-against-two-pasters-for-vilifying-muslims\/"},"modified":"2004-12-23T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-23T12:00:00","slug":"2004-12-23-australian-christians-ponder-consequences-of-court-decision-against-two-pasters-for-vilifying-muslims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/12\/23\/2004-12-23-australian-christians-ponder-consequences-of-court-decision-against-two-pasters-for-vilifying-muslims\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Christians Ponder Consequences of Court Decision Against Two Pasters for &#8220;Vilifying Muslims&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.crosswalk.com\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>AUSTRALIA, December 22, 2004: HPI note: The following report, originally titled &#8220;The Beginning Of The End Of Christianity In Australia?,&#8221; is from the evangelical Christian news service, Crosswalk.com:<BR><br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\nTwo Australian Christian pastors have been found guilty of vilifying Muslims. The decision was handed down in Melbourne on December 17. Bill Muehlenberg, the National Vice-President of The Australian Family Association (<a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.family.org.au\">here<\/a>) said the decision could &#8220;could mark the beginning of the end of freedom of speech in Australia, and the official restriction of proclaiming the Christian gospel.&#8221; The Judge said the two pastors breached section 8 of Australia&#8217;s Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 which says a person cannot engage in conduct that &#8220;incites hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, that other person or class of persons.&#8221; While exemptions are in place, Muehlenberg said, for &#8220;&#8216;any genuine academic, artistic, religious or scientific purposes or any purpose that is in the public interest,&#8217; the judge found that these exceptions did not here apply, because the person&#8217;s conduct could &#8216;not be regarded as reasonable and in good faith.'&#8221; However, Muehlenberg, said, section 9 of the Act says a &#8220;&#8216;person&#8217;s motive in engaging in any conduct is irrelevant.&#8217; &#8220;To argue that quoting a religious book makes one guilty of vilification would put 98% of religious discussions out of bounds,&#8221; Muehlenberg said. &#8220;The truth is, probably the majority of what any Christian has said or written about other faiths will be found to be vilifying, based on the decisions of the judge.<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceAUSTRALIA, December 22, 2004: HPI note: The following report, originally titled &#8220;The Beginning Of The End Of Christianity In Australia?,&#8221;,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}