Talking Bollocks In A Mosque

Brendan O'Neill can be an arse but when he's right you just have to acknowledge it:

It’s official: it is now a crime to be arrogant

There was a time when ‘inciting terrorism’ would have meant convincing and cajoling an individual or a group of individuals to commit a terrorist atrocity. And there was a time when ‘fundraising for terrorists’ would have meant, well, raising funds for terrorists: that is, collecting money and handing it over to a terrorist group for the purposes of buying weaponry, semtex, flying lessons or some other item or thing likely to be useful in the commission or execution of an act of terrorism.

Not any more. In the trial of Izzadeen and his accomplices, there was not a jot of evidence that anyone had been incited to terrorism by their words, or indeed that their words had been intended as a direct form of incitement, or that Izzadeen, his mates or anyone else who listened to their cranky sermons had sent money to terrorist training camps in Iraq. No, Izzadeen was found guilty and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on the basis of a rambling, incoherent 11-hour ‘protest sermon’ he gave at Regents Park Mosque in November 2004. During the sermon, Izzadeen, who was surrounded by a tiny group of like-minded losers, slated the actions of the American and British armies in Iraq and praised 9/11.