James McConnell, a 78-year-old Belfast pastor, has been found not guilty of broadcasting “grossly offensive” speech about Islam.
McConnell, who made his remarks at the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in Belfast in 2014, was charged with improper use of a public electronic communications network and causing a grossly offensive message to be sent by means of a public electronic communications network.
Both are prohibited under the British 2003 Communications Act.
The verdict follows a trial after one of McConnell’s sermons was broadcast online. In it McConnell said: “Islam is heathen, Islam is satanic, Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell.” McConnell compared Muslims to the IRA, saying there were cells of Islamic radicals spread across the United Kingdom. He also said: “Now people say there are good Muslims in Britain – that may be so – but I don’t trust them.”
Acquittal, for a man who ought never to have been charged in the first place. Irony has it’s child.
This pastor has not only the right to speak the truth as he did, but he is under obligation to do so. For it is the annointed service and sworn duty of every pastor, to preach the Truth, and to be vigorous in his denouncement of every form of evil, and particularly so against those evils which directly threaten his iwn community.