Showdown in Birmingham

by Tim Burton (Catstrangler101) (April, 10 2014)

A link to the case from Liberty GB is included here.

Never mind that the right to free speech is one of our fundamental freedoms and the cornerstone of a free democracy – if it offends one of our protected minority species then it must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law – or so the current thinking goes today, influenced as it is by the twin evils of political correctness and multiculturalism.

The judge entered the courtroom just after 10:00 and the first thing that became apparent was that my case was not the only case scheduled for Court 13 that day. There was one more case involving a dispute between two local business people. However, the other case was beset by procedural delays concerning the appropriate documentation, and was quickly adjourned to a later date. Then it was time for my case to proceed. My name and address were confirmed, the charge was read out, and it was ascertained that I wished to plead Not Guilty.

The first problem was to get the video-link working. Two enormous TV screens on the wall of the Court were to facilitate the evidence to be given by Fiyaz Mughal from an undisclosed remote location, somewhere in London. Fiyaz Mughal had submitted a letter to the Court indicating that he was too frightened to come up to Birmingham because the threatening nature of my tweets had made him scared for the safety of himself and his family. (I had been quite surprised when I had first heard this. I know that they say that the pen is mightier than the sword, but one would have thought that having gone out of his way to make life difficult for me by pressing charges, Fiyaz Mughal would have at least had the courtesy to be present in person, in order to look me in the eye.) Nevertheless, it was his right to ask for his evidence to be given from a remote location, and even though I myself might have thought he was a complete wuss, the Court had granted his request.

Fiyaz Mughal was reminded that the Court was dealing only with the three tweets that formed the subject of the charge. Then it was time to break for lunch.

My defence lawyer started by taking me through the use of Twitter as a social medium and my use of it with respect to my tweets. I explained that because of the nature of Islam as a totalitarian political ideology rather than a religion, I saw it as my duty to raise awareness of the threat of Islam towards non-Muslims and that Twitter was a useful tool in that regard. I talked about taqiyya and how Fiyaz Mughal was using dissimulation when he avoided explaining how Muslims use it today to deceive non-Muslims about the true nature of Islam. I explained that in my view Islam posed a threat to our civilisation and that our political elites were ignoring a very real long-term danger in favour of short-term advantages. Then it was the turn of the Crown Prosecution lawyer.

Shortly after that I was released from the witness stand, and Professor Hans Jansen was called. I have to say he made an excellent witness, with his extensive qualifications over many years presented to the Court in detail, and he elaborated on the concept of taqiyya, basically confirming all the points I had made and also making the point that although Fiyaz Mughal might have been well-meaning (!) he was obviously not a student of Sharia Law and was inaccurate in his explanation of taqiyya to the court.

The judge then began his summing-up. He noted that although some of my language had been unpleasant, and that Fiyaz Mughal might well have found it to be upsetting, that was not the test. The test was whether my comments transcended the boundaries of fair political comment and strayed into the realms of criminality through harassment. Had Mr Burton crept up to his door one night and shouted these things through his letterbox, then it might have been perceived differently, but as it was, the use of the Twitter platform to convey the same messages was not the same thing at all, which was a point which I had elaborated upon in my essay in New English Review a couple of months earlier.

At that point a round of applause reverberated around the courtroom from the public gallery. I was a free man. The Crown Prosecution lawyer, in one futile last-ditch attempt, did then try to have a restraining order applied to me in respect of Fiyaz Mughal, but the Judge was having none of it. I thought that was nice, because I did want to send a photographic memento of the day to Fiyaz Mughal (see below.)

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