Jail Time For Four Men Who Threw Pig's Head At Mosque In May 2013

OpposingViews.com ^ | 17NOV2014 | Lina Batarags

[Jack Hydrazine]

Four men were jailed for throwing a severed pig’s head into a mosque in Lancashire last May.

Shocked women and children watched as the four friends dumped a carrier bag containing the severed head in the parking lot of Blackpool Central Mosque.

Preston Crown Court was told the four men had organized the crime—which came only two days after the murder of solider Lee Rigby in May 2013—as a prank, knowing it would be seen as an insult in a Muslim place of worship.

The four men—Thomas Ashton, 21; Andrew Warner, 31; Travis Crabtree, 25; and Steven White, 28—are all from Blackpool or Lytham-St.-Annes. They were locked up on Monday for a total of just over three years. Crabtree was given 14 months in prison. Ashton, White and Warner were each given ten, eight, and seven months, respectively.

Investigating police found taunting messages on White’s Facebook, which read “They will be fuming.”

Mirror reports that the four men admitted to religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress last May in the aftermath of the bloody murder of Rigby in Woolwich, London.

Lawyers for the four men stated that the men were not racists, noting that the incident was “a prank that went horribly wrong.” Another lawyer added that they had just been “swept up in the moment.”

An imam, a leader of the mosque, had pleaded for clemency for the men. Judge Graham Knowles QC, however, said that only jail was appropriate.

“People are and must be free to worship as they please and without this kind of foul attack on them and that which they hold sacred,” Knowles stated.

The judge went on to say to the men that “what you four did must be denounced.”

Prosecutor Clare Thomas said a volunteer received a Facebook message that an unpleasant package had been sent to the mosque; the volunteer then discovered the pig’s head in a carrier bag outside the mosque.

“It sent a shiver down his spine,” Thomas said. “Pigs and items relating to them are forbidden for Muslims to touch or have contact with.”

“Its presence at a place of worship was highly insulting,” Thomas continued. “Parents and children had started to arrive at the mosque. Some of them saw the head and felt offended and angry.”

[melsec]

But some of them seem to be ok with the heads of children being released from their bodies. Three years is ridiculous but reflects how PC England has become but I believe this PCness is a reflection of genuine fear - they know there are too many Muslims now that any great offence will see the loss of many lives. I never thought I would see my home country cower like this - it is pathetic

[bluejean]

Ahh it’s good to be a muzzie. You can offend, terrorize, lop off heads, rape women and children, murder your wives and daughters, make bombs and use them, turn airplanes into missiles, teach your kids jihad and how to use weapons and hate everyone everywhere and look forward to wearing REAL suicide vests or shoe bombs or underwear bombs and demand tolerance and respect and special privileges all day long and get away with it.

[cynwoody]

The Russian emigre chick who drew that chuckle got jail time in Israel for it.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZjsBgiyOGb0J:israelbehindthenews.com/the-tatiana-soskin-case-critically-examined-2/2907/+&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

"At a time when a Tel Aviv museum is displaying photographs of naked men wrapped in tefilin, and the national Israel Museum in Jerusalem has an erotic exhibit identifying with Eva Braun, Tatiana Soskin is in jail because she insulted not Judaism, but Islam."

[Don W]

What a scourge appeasement is. We may be doomed by our attempts to reason with these people. We’re already punishing those who dare question the islamic creed...

[nathanbedford]

This judge has elevated subjectivism over free speech.

If we analogize this demonstration concerning a pig's head to the American evolution of laws concerning the burning of the flag, the whole matter comes into view through a different prism. Under the American system, free speech triumphs over the patriotic but subjective hurt feelings of those who object to burning the flag. The American system says that free speech necessarily hurts feelings otherwise it would not be objected to which is another way of saying it would not be objectionable.

Free speech does not cease to be speech, free or otherwise, merely by sticking another label on it such as "harassment"as this judge has done. The question is, when does the speech become so objectionable or so dangerous that society is justified in censoring it? Incidentally, speech need not be an utterance it can be an act such as burning the flag, or depositing a pig's head. Nor does speech cease to be speech because of the motive of the utterer or the actor. So "religious" harassment or religiously "aggravated" harassment is still speech and religiously activated "intentional" harassment is also still speech.

In determining when speech crosses a line and should be punishable by government, one should always strive for some sort of objective standard in order to ensure that we have a rule of law rather than a reign of subjectivity. So the American Supreme Court has struggled to come up with objective standards by which speech might be judged but this judge eschews any attempt to find objectivity and sells out entirely to a politically correct and subjective need to punish those uttering a protest. He does not find a danger to the community, clear and present or otherwise, he finds "insult," actually, a finds it "highly" insulting as though insult were a reason to curtail speech and highly insulting speech even more to be censored.

People felt "offended and angry" notes His Honor and one can only reflect on the alleged indignation of abortionists over seeing photographs of their own handiwork. Political correctness is more than an assault on free speech, it is an attempt to rejigger the moral equation upon which society operates. In a First Amendment world objectionable speech is the price we pay to have free speech. In other words, hurt feelings are the price we pay for democracy. Political correctness deplores democracy and deplores any morality other than the one it contrives. So political correctness is essentially an attack on process in which the ends drive the means. The end is never the ostensible end, in this case the protection of Muslim worship free of insult, it is the means by which the left seeks to impose its latest notions of Utopia on the people.

Those notions are liable to change as frequently as the flavor of the week. There is no eternal leftist goal of protecting worship, not Muslim worship and certainly not Christian worship. The time will soon come when the endgame for the left will be to stamp out all worship and that certainly will include the values associated with Islam.

When the rule law is a rule of subjectivity there is no end to the good political correctness can do.

[Gene Eric]

>> religiously aggravated intentional harassment

Meanwhile, Islam rapes the daughters of London without consequence — a pathetic situation.

[Viking2002]

Yup.

[RginTN]

meanwhile they will welcome IS terrorists back with open arms and have islamists on BBC praising the IS.

Socialism has destroyed the UK.

[Ghost of JV]

The liberals were more outraged over this than they were over the actual murder of Lee Rigby.

[Truth29]

Unfortunately, the world responds to fear. If Christians were feared as much as Muslims, the outcome might be different. If the Judge’s head were tossed at the entrance of the Mosque, the results might be different. Western civilization needs to realize that it is being corrupted and will fall to the blood cult invaders without a new crusade.

[BobL]

Given that’s it’s England, these guys will probably spend more time in jail than the animal that killed Rigby.

[tomkat]

Your Mencken quotes are outstanding, and more true today than ever.

[I want the USA back]

But if a subhuman savage cuts a human’s head off, he doesn’t have anything to worry about - he is a victim.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

This took place near where I live. The sad thing is that when Muslim extremists were arrested for burning poppies a rememberence day parade, they got a £50 fine. Not very fair or equitable. Muslims feelings are worth more to the establishment than those of ordinary British people.

[Bigg Red]

...the four friends dumped a carrier bag containing the severed head in the parking lot of Blackpool Central Mosque.

(((
Which is it now? The perps threw it at the mosque, as the headline says, or they quietly left it in the parking lot in a bag? No slant to this account, huh?

Three years for this?! I wish I could reward these guys.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Christians seem to have turned into pacificst pansies. Why is that?

[ROCKLOBSTER]

It really doesn't amount to much more than Free Speech

Yeah, where do they think they are....America?

[Truth29]

"Christians seem to have turned into pacificst pansies. Why is that?"

Decades of Episcopalian, Unitarian, all religions are equal mush plus an education system that systematically punishes and eliminates any critical thought process along with any testosterone type responses.

[the scotsman]

Except the two who killed Rigby both have whole-life sentences.

[WashingtonSource]

Absurd. Unjust. Insane. Suicidal.