Religion in mitigation?

If you are charged with a criminal offence you may bring certain matters in evidence to defend yourself. If you are nonetheless found guilty you may bring perhaps the same issues and/or other ones into account to seek to persuade the court to be lenient in sentencing. Such factors are called 'mitigating'.

Cherie Booth QC (aka Mrs Tony Blair) has got herself into a spot of bother recently over just this issue in her capacity as Recorder (judge) at Inner London Crown Court. A young man called Shamso Miah punched another man shortly after leaving a mosque. Miah was found guilty and sentenced, but Ms Booth told him 'I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before. You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable'.

One can imagine Professor Dawkins going ballistic over this and indeed the National Secular Society has lodged a complaint with the Office for Judicial Complaints saying 'This seems to indicate that she would not have treated a non-religious person with the same latitude. We think this is discriminatory and unjust'.

For about the first time ever I think I am of a mind with the National Secular Society.

Let's analyse, from the sparse facts at our disposal, what happened. Being religious clearly is not a defence, nor is being of previous good character. So we are in the realm of mitigating factors. Not having been in trouble before is clearly relevant.

How, though, does the defendant's religiosity come into it? Ms Booth's thinking one assumes is that his religion will help him keep out of trouble and a significant part of that is his knowledge that such an act of violence is wrong. Presumably she had in mind the rehabilitation of the offender - we are not told what the sentence was - prison? (unlikely if a first time offender); a community service order? Either way it was suspended.

There are two elements. (i) Being religous. But Miah had only shortly before been in a mosque before he clobbered someone, apparently for no reason known to the victim. Could one not argue that religion was in fact bad for him? Might indeed have been an aggravating factor? Why is there an assumption (at least in Ms Booth's mind) that all religion is bound to be helpful? A biblical approach to non-Christian religions would be that they are formalised idolatry therefore inevitably harmful not beneficial to their practitioners. One may not expect Ms Booth or any other judge to take the biblical line, but why assume the opposite? Perhaps sociological evidence of the general law-abiding nature of strongly religious people played its part in her thinking. That, however, seems a flimsy basis on which to favour a religious person, giving a flavour of justification to the protest from the Secular Society.

(ii) That because he was religious (it seems) he knew that what he did was wrong. But (a) do not non-religious people know that thuggery is wrong, at least except in extreme cases? Why should that knowledge be counted as mitigating when it comes in a religous framework? And can it be assumed that his knowledge of the rightness or wrongness of his act was mediated through his religion anyway?

(b)Perhaps the more significant point is this - should not knowledge that what one does is wrong be an aggravating factor, not a mitigating one? He who knows what is right to do and does not do it will be beaten with many blows, for to whom much is given, of him will much be expected (Luke 12:48). There is no reason why this eminently reasonable principle should not be acceptable in the judicial system.

Therefore despite Ms Booth's no doubt good intentions one cannot help but scent the whiff of pro-religious prejudice here.

Moreover at the great bar of God's judgement, we should all be very clear: the practice of religion will bring us no favours; and it will be absolutely no mitigation to say 'I knew what I did was wrong'. Our punishment will be commensurate with our knowledge - according to the clarity of the law under which we live and the light we have.

For mercy we look elsewhere - to Jesus Christ - and not our religious practices nor our moral knowledge.