by Hugh Fitzgerald
A former deputy leader of Britain First has been sentenced to 180 hours community service over a speech she made in Belfast.
Her trial was swift:
“Jayda Fransen, 33, was found guilty of stirring up hatred during a speech about Islam in August 2017.
“She was also convicted for separate comments at a peace wall in the city.
“Convicting Fransen, of Moat Avenue in Donaghadee, County Down, a judge said her words were “a general, vehement attack against a religious group.”
“”The speech was made during the “Northern Ireland Against Terrorism” event two years ago. Britain First leader Paul Golding, 37, and two other English men, John Banks and Paul Rimmer, were previously acquitted on similar charges.
“They were accused of using threatening, abusive or insulting words intended to stir up hatred or arouse fear.
“During the trial, defense lawyers argued that each of the accused was entitled to freedom of expression, no matter how offensive their speeches may be.
“The court heard that Fransen told those gathered at the rally that there was no moderate version of Islam and that “these people are baying for our blood”.
Comment:
As the celebrated apostate ibn Warraq has said, “there are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate.”
Fransen knows that there is no “moderate” version of the Qur’an and hadith. There is only one Qur’an for all Muslims. The hadith, too, remain the same for all members of the umma. .There are those “moderate Muslims”” who choose to ignore the 109 Qur’anic verses commanding Muslims to “fight” and to “kill” and to “smite at the necks of” and to “strike terror in the hearts of” Unbelievers, but those verses remain in the Qur’an, immutable, with only the milder, earlier, “Meccan” verses being abrogated by the harsher, later, “Medinan” verses. In claiming that there is “no moderate” version of Islam Fransen is simply recognizing this bleak reality.
“She says that “these people are baying for our blood.” Whom does she mean? Not every last Muslim. Clearly, “these people’” means those Muslims who want to dutifully follow the commands to wage jihad against the Unbelievers. The Muslim Believer who reads, and attempts to follow, or hep others to carry out, such Qur’anic verses as 2:191-193, 3:151, 4:89, 5;51, 8:12, 8:60, 9;5,9:29,47:4, and 98:6, that tells him to fight against and to kill the Unbelievers, “the most vile of created beings,’” is surely “baying for the blood” of non-Muslims.
Fransen added: “Islam says every single one of you wonderful people here today deserves to be killed.”
Again, she is talking about Islam, not all Muslims. The 109 Qur’anic verses that command violent Jihad (fight, kill, smite, sow terror)against the Unbelievers (“every single one of you wonderful people here today”) are firmly based on the idea that the Unbelievers “deserve to be killed.” Is Fransen to be punished for pointing this out?
“Those attending the rally were then told it was time for the world to come together against “the one common enemy.”
Some apologists for Islam like to claim that Muslims are opposed only to people in the West, not because they are Unbelievers but because Muslims resent the West’s “colonial past,” during which Muslims suffered. This ignores the fact that European colonialism scarcely affected most of the Arab world. In North Africa only Algeria was a colony in the classic sense. In the Middle East, the Arabian peninsula was off-limits to Unbelievers, save for the entrepôt of Aden, which resupplied ships on the England-to-India route, and a handful of British garrisons on the upper Gulf coast, designed to keep the peace among the local rulers and tribes. The British held mandates for Iraq and Palestine, the French held the mandate for Syria/Lebanon; both mandatory authorities were there to prepare the local Arabs for self-government (and, in Western Palestine, to do the same for the Jews). Mandates were not colonies.
Islam had been waging war on non-Muslims for more than a thousand years before “European colonialism” came to full flower. During the 1,400 years of its existence, Islam’s adherents have been waging war not just against Western Christendom, but against all non-Muslims: Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and other even smaller groups. This endless war is not one of Islam versus the West, but of Islam versus All the Rest. And it is the recognition of this shared victimhood at the hands of aggressive Islam that led Jayda Fransen to call for unity among the many different victims of Islam, allied against “the one common enemy.” There was nothing inaccurate in her description of Islam; in defining all non-Muslims as its enemy, Islam logically becomes for them “the common enemy.”
“The judge told the court: “I’m satisfied these words were intended to stir up hatred and arouse fear.”
How did Jayda Fransen “stir up hatred” of Muslims? She did not suggest that Muslims, as individuals, should be hated. She knows there are Muslims who ignore large parts of the Qur’an. She did not call for violence. And there was no violence following her speech. She simply was pointing out how normative Islam views the Unbelievers, Given how many apologists for Islam continually insist on the “peace” and “tolerance” of Islam, she offered a most useful and necessary corrective.
“He also found her guilty over a separate, filmed incident at a Belfast peace wall in December 2017.
“On that occasion, the court heard that Fransen declared the “Islamification” of Britain would lead to similar walls to separate the two sides.
Fransen was predicitng that an ever-larger Muslim population in the U.K. would lead to two parallel societies, One would consist of those Muslims who refuse to integrate into British society, reject its laws and customs, and hope to live, within the U.K., by Muslim rules and principles. These are the True Believers. As against them would be all others — Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and those “moderate” Muslims who reject much of what is contained in Islam’s texts and teachings. Between the two groups, there would be an invisible mental wall separating them, and perhaps many real walls, too, dividing Muslim areas from non-Muslim ones. Fransen’s prediction about “islamification” leading to such walls may or may not come true, but it is a legitimate worry; we already have hundreds of No-Go areas all over Europe, where non-Muslims fear to enter. She should not have been punished for alerting her audience to this consequences of “islamification.”
“During sentencing on Friday, a defense lawyer for Fransen said she had now made her home in Northern Ireland.
“He also said she intended to lodge an appeal.
“He told the court no actual violence was occasioned as a result of Fransen’s conduct.
“Sentencing her, the judge said the words she used were “unlawful”, adding that normally a custodial sentence would be imposed.
What was “unlawful”–or untrue — about Jayda Fransen’s words? Nothing. We can only conclude that British justice has reached such a sorry state that judges now treat as “unlawful” those statements about Islam which may be perfectly true, but which must not be said lest non-Muslims think worse of Islam. That, of course, would never do.
First published in Jihad Watch.
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One Response
President Trump did well retweeting her when he did. There is no reason that Tommy Robinson should be the <em>only</em> face of the anti-Muslim resistance in the UK: grab them whenever and wherever you find them, and give them the blowhorns to shout it loud, shout it clear
If there are people in mainstream parties who are willing to step up and voice this fact as obvious as boys are male and girls are female, by all means, recognize them. But until then, support those in the ‘fringe’ parties who are willing to do the same.