Disharmony

Casefile -

"Seditious tract couple deserve jail, says DPP"

Quoting DPP - "...the tracts contained derogatory comments about other faiths, and that any reasonable person would agree that the highly-charged language and illustrations in them would definitely cause outrage to most non-Christian recipients of the tracts and had the potential to cause enmity, ill-will and hostility between Christians and non-Christians..."

Let's see what the verdict is going to be.

I can think of many things openly marketed and blasted all over TV screens, billboards etc that make "derogatory comments about other faiths" and that they contain "highly-charged language and illustrations in them that would definitely cause outrange to...." other religions.

I don't think it would be wise for the judge to sentence based on the content of the materials, because it would open up a can of worms and many popular publications, movies, etc could likewise be labelled 'seditious' and their publishers jailed.

And the underlying logic is problematic, if something is ruled as seditious because it may perpetuate violent reactions (since DPP keep quoting the Dutch riots over the cartoons) then offensive materials about other religions are allowed because the offended people don't threaten to riot?.... bah!....

On the second point, of distributing them to Muslims in a bid to cause disharmony, so far from the facts it seems that the two Muslims who complained were just two in a huge mailing list that the couple had... if the couple were out to cause disharmony etc I think it would have to be proven that they had a huge list of Muslims and mosques they were mailing these tracts to.

On that note, they could at most be punished for neglecting to realise that distributing them to Muslims would be offensive to them as individuals (personally I think that's a sad state of affairs but it would be a face-saving judgement and yet maintain Singapore's stand on religious harmony)