Mark James

Sitting in court watching Stephen Gray’s appeal against a conviction for reposting a meme which mocked Islam and Muhammad marrying a child. He had 15-20 followers on Facebook. A (non-Muslim!) neighbour, who Stephen has previous disagreements with, decided to report him to the police claiming it caused him distress… The fundamental argument from the CPS is that Stephen was not making a political point. That he expressed his objection to Islamic child marriage in a way that was simply to offend because it singled out Islam, and he should have made his post more nuanced and sensitive if he was making a political point. The defence is having to point out that Muhammad did in fact marry a 6 year old according to Islamic texts, and that child marriage does still occur in Islamic countries AND there are prominent Islamic scholars IN THE UK who openly say that they are content with child marriage. And either way, it is not illegal to offend others, and you are allowed to make political points that are not nuanced. To think of all the actual, serious crime in Middlesbrough — let alone the rest of the country — and the time being wasted on this nonsense. Actually witnessing the amount of public resource and time being funnelled into prosecuting people for causing offence by highlighting a factual point is acutely infuriating. Anyway, join the @SpeechUnion because you never know when it might be you having to explain why you don’t like child marriage, or anything else that Islam permits.