{"id":357,"date":"2008-06-03T11:37:37","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T15:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=357"},"modified":"2008-06-03T11:37:37","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T15:37:37","slug":"losing-religious-freedom-in-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=357","title":{"rendered":"Losing Religious Freedom in England"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking about one’s religion is both a free speech and religious freedom issue.  Both are being chipped away at in England<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. <\/p>\n

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph<\/i> this year. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Bishop’s charges were denied vehemently, but it turns out he was right.<\/p>\n

The "police community support officer" who accused them of the crime threatened to arrest them.<\/p>\n

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A police community support officer (PCSO) interrupted the conversation and began questioning the ministers about their beliefs. <\/p>\n

They said when the officer realised they were American, although both have lived in Britain for many years, he launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. <\/p>\n

Mr Cunningham said: "I told him that this had nothing to do with the gospel we were preaching but he became very aggressive. <\/p>\n

"He said we were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message. He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station." <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The police department wouldn’t apologize, and just gave the PCSO training in hate crime and communication.  One would have hoped this training would have come before<\/em> putting hit out on the street.<\/p>\n

Unmentioned in the Telegraph article but picked up by the Daily Mail<\/a>; the PCSO himself was Muslim.  In addition, there was a threat of violence, and the actual constable on site backed up the PCSO<\/p>\n

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The community officer is also said to have told the two men: ‘You have been warned. If you come back here and get beat up, well, you have been warned.’ <\/p>\n

A police constable who was present during the incident in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham is also alleged to have told the preachers not to return to the district. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Presumably, this is not a Jihadi, just a (literal) Muslim-on-the-street (PCSOs are not official police officers) saying that Christians talking about their faith in a Muslim area are, in general, going to get beat up, in a "that’s just the way it is" attitude.  If this is the kind of "law enforcement" that the police themselves are backing up, I fear for the freedoms in Britain.<\/p>\n

[tags]England,freedom of religion,freedom of speech,Islam,Christianity[\/tags]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking about one’s religion is both a free speech and religious freedom issue.  Both are being chipped away at in England. A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,9,34,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-doug","category-islam","category-religion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}