‘Jeremy Corbyn, the one time leader of the UK’s left-wing Labour Party and the head of the opposition, was barred from being reinstated as a member of parliament after a 23 – 14 internal party vote.
“Today’s…vote and Keir Starmer’s ongoing decision to bar me from sitting as a Labour MP is disappointing,” Corbyn wrote in a Twitter statement on Tuesday.
“I am grateful for and humbled by the support I’ve received, especially from my Islington North constituents. The struggle for peace, justice and sustainability goes on.”
Corbyn was suspended from the party in October 2020, on the heels of a report that found widespread antisemitism within the Labour party.
He did not accept the findings of the report and suggested it was essentially a conspiracy aimed at ousting him from power, which led to him being barred from sitting as an MP for the party.
The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) wrote that party leaders, including former London mayor Ken Livingstone and councillor Pam Bromley, used antisemitic tropes and smears freely, and that Jewish members of the party were regularly harassed and intimidated into silence.
“We found that the Labour Party’s response to anti-Semitism complaints has been inconsistent, poor and not transparent, in terms of the process used, reasons for decisions, record-keeping, delay and failures to communicate with complainants. Some complaints were unjustifiably not investigated at all,” the EHRC wrote.
Rather than take responsibility for the issue, Corbyn said that those complaining about antisemitism within the party were doing so not out of genuine concern, but to achieve strategic goals.
He downplayed the seriousness of the issue by saying that antisemitism exists everywhere in the world and that whistle-blowers were acting in bad faith.
“The scale of the problem was…dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media,” he wrote in a Facebook post at the time.
‘Last weekend, a British Muslim invaded a Texas synagogue and held the rabbi and four members of his flock at gunpoint while demanding the release from prison of a biochemist known as ‘Lady Al Qaeda’. The drama flared briefly across news sites before vanishing from sight. As the Australian Jewish News observes, the assault
…failed to make even the world headlines on the ABC digital media platforms for the 12 hours the stand-off with police was taking place.
Since then, if the ABC’s internal search engine is any guide, there has been only one follow-up. Some stories, it seems, are of little but passing interest. There are terrorists, and then there are those other terrorists, the ones whose motives and religious background are best not mentioned. Diversity, don’t you know, enriches us all, so team-player journalism ignores the sand that grates in the gears of the multiculturalists’ narrative.
Daniel Greenfield, however, indulges his curiosity to report what mainstream media might have done were it actually interested in getting to the nub of a story rather than papering over unfortunate and disconcerting truths. Of Faisal Akram (above), who will never again interrupt Shabbat gatherings thanks to a sharp-shooting Texas SWAT team, he writes:
Back home, the Blackburn Muslim Community page announced that “Faisal Akram has sadly departed from this temporary world” and prayed that Allah “bless him with the highest ranks of Paradise”….
…The town has produced no shortage of Jihadists, including the youngest terrorist in the UK, as well as a number of Jihadis who traveled to join ISIS, an associate of shoe bomber Richard Reid, and a terrorist who played a key role in an Al Qaeda plot that targeted New York and D.C.
Blackburn is one of the most segregated towns in the country and has been described as a “no-go zone”. The area that produced the Temple Terrorist has one of the highest Muslim populations outside of London and some claim that flying the English flag has been effectively outlawed.
The setting couldn’t be any better for the media to whitewash the murderous terrorist with the familiar excuses that he was the victim of failed integration in the United Kingdom. His family, in an even more familiar excuse, is claiming that he “was suffering from mental health issues”.‘https://quadrant.org.au/
Australia along with the UK is becoming more and more anti-God and antagonistic toward God’s Word!
‘After facing arrest and detention for preaching that homosexuality is a sin, an American evangelist is warning that “things are getting very bad” in the United Kingdom and other Western countries, suggesting that the situation has deteriorated to the point where they are “becoming communist.”
Ryan Schiavo, who describes himself as an “evangelist and missionary,” was arrested in London on July 22 for preaching that homosexuality is a sin. While Schiavo is an American, he spends a considerable amount of time in London and frequently ministers to British youth and others gathered in the public square.
In an interview with The Christian Post, Schiavo recounted the events leading up to his arrest and warned about its implications for free speech and freedom of religion in the U.K. and Western civilization as a whole.
“I was preaching the Gospel on the streets as I frequently do, but it was about a 30-minute message, and in the course of a long message I can touch on many topics that I believe are pertinent,” he said. “At one point, I talked about the issue of homosexuality and transgenderism. I said that homosexuality is a sin; I talk about how it’s destructive, and the damage the transgender agenda is doing to children right now in the schools because it’s being pushed on children at a very young age here.”
Schiavo told CP that one of the things he said while preaching was that “the churches that have rainbow flags on them” were “not real churches.” His message drew the ire of one young woman, whom he believed was a lesbian. According to Schiavo, she was “very upset at what I had said, and so she called the police and the police came.”
Ryan Schiavo, an American street preacher, is arrested by Metropolitan Police for asserting that homosexuality is a sin, July 22, 2021. | Courtesy of Ryan Schiavo
As documented in a video of his arrest, Schiavo was detained for purportedly violating Section 4A of the Public Order Act, which bans people from causing “intentional harassment, alarm, or distress.”
The law declares that “a person is guilty of an offense if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm, or distress, he — (a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior, or disorderly behavior, or (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting.”
As Metropolitan Police officers moved in to arrest him, Schiavo declared, “It is an honor to suffer for Jesus Christ.” He predicted that “God is going to judge this country so severely” because of its embrace of LGBT ideology.
“This is because I am a Christian!” he exclaimed. “That’s why this is happening.”
Schiavo told CP that when he was taken to jail, he was “put in a cell for 10 hours and given a mental health evaluation by the National Health Service before being released in the middle of the night.” He lamented that situations like his “egregious” detention were becoming “all too common.”
Describing the mental health evaluation to CP, Schiavo maintained that he was asked “personal questions about my family and about my work and how I was doing physically.” Schiavo cited the fact that he had to undergo a mental health evaluation as evidence that “things are getting very bad” in the U.K. regarding freedom of speech and religious expression.
“All these institutions are working together with each other; they’re anti-Christ,” he added. “It’s time for the church to wake up and to be prepared for persecution. Freedom of speech and expression are very much under attack in the Western world, and I’m concerned that many of these Western countries are becoming communist.”
Elaborating on his mental health evaluation, Schiavo recounted that he “did talk about the issue of homosexuality and transgenderism” with the man who was questioning him. “I said to him, ‘Would you call a banana a carrot?’ And the point I was making was this is what we do with people now. We call men women and women men.”
“I didn’t say that to him. I just said, ‘Would you call a banana a carrot?’ And he looked at me and he said, ‘If somebody was offended, I would.’ And I looked at him and I said, ‘I should be the one asking you the questions.’”
Schiavo contended that his mental health evaluation, which lasted for 30 minutes, was an effort to “convince me not to talk about homosexuality in public anymore.” He told CP that “he (the mental health evaluator) wanted me to affirm him and just say, ‘OK,’ and agree, and I never did.”
The evangelist attributed his hostile treatment by the police to the fact that British law enforcement officials are “so trained to hear ‘homosexuality’ or ‘Islam’ because those are the two most protected demographics in Britain right now.” He stressed that in the U.K., “you cannot speak against homosexuality or transgenderism and you can’t speak against Islam.”
“So if they hear those words, their antennas are up because they go through all of this pro-LGBT training … in their schooling, … at every other level of society people do here, it’s being pushed on them,” he continued. “And so when they hear that word, they’re immediately thinking ‘hate crime,’ ‘hate crime.’”
Although he wasn’t formally charged with a crime, Schiavo’s arrest puts him “in the national police records for three years.” He’s now working with the U.K.-based Christian Legal Centre to “get this overturned.”
“I did not commit a crime,” Schiavo insisted. “It is not a crime in the U.K. to say homosexuality is a sin in public or to say that churches with rainbow flags on them are not churches. This is protected speech.”
In a separate interview with CP, Linda Thacker, who attends church with Schiavo when he’s in the U.K. and videotaped the arrest, explained why she decided to document his interaction with law enforcement officials on camera: “I didn’t like the security guard’s attitude toward Ryan. He seemed very hostile.”
“We wanted to make sure that there was no kind of false accusation,” she said.
Thacker characterized Schiavo’s arrest as “a bit of a wake-up call for me,” expressing concern that “the right to have free speech and to express how we feel personally about … anyone else’s lifestyle … will put you in the position of being called a domestic terrorist or some kind of hater.” Like Schiavo, Thacker fears that the U.K. is “heading toward a communist state.”
Before his arrest, Thacker said there had been confrontations between Schiavo, his supporters and LGBT individuals that weren’t captured on camera.
“The lesbian was very threatening and kicked his drink down the road. [She] also tried to tear my husband’s Bible out of his hands, which she didn’t manage to do, but she got a leaflet out of his Bible … and flung it into the street.”
While Schiavo did face hostility following his comments about homosexuality, he also received support, including from an atheist, who was featured in Thacker’s video. Schiavo told CP that while the man “said that he disagreed with 99% of what I said,” he nonetheless argued to the police that ‘This man has not done anything warranting … an arrest, he’s just exercising his freedom of speech.’”
In spite of the man’s impassioned defense of Schiavo, the street evangelist lamented that the police “never even took a statement from him.” Instead, Schiavo said, “the police only took one formal statement on the street … and it was from this young girl … [who] was upset with what I said.”
“From the beginning, they weren’t interested in getting to the truth. … It was just this one girl’s testimony that they listened to.”
Thacker seconded Schiavo’s accusation that police had conducted a one-sided investigation: “All they were interested in doing was arresting him on the grounds of this lesbian that said that she had been distressed by what was said.”
Schiavo is not the only street evangelist to face legal consequences for sharing Christian teachings about marriage and homosexuality with the British public. As CP previously reported, British Pastor John Sherwood was arrested by police in April for emphasizing the biblical definition of marriage as he preached from a step ladder in the Northwest London town of Uxbridge.’https://www.christianpost.com/news/american-evangelist-jailed-in-uk-its-getting-very-bad-here.html
‘“Saddening to hear Christian preacher Hatun Tash say Speakers’ Corner – a bastion of free speech since 1872 – has become ‘hostile and dangerous’”, tweeted Stephen Evans, Chief Executive of the National Secular Society. “The threat of a de facto blasphemy law enforced by the threat of violence is there for all to see”, he added, stating what everyone knows (if they have eyes and ears), but is rarely expressed for fear of the consequences. But if a sharia blasphemy code creeps into Speakers’ Corner, in can be enforced just about anywhere – by the implicit (and sometimes quite explicit) threat of violence.
After all, there is a still an RE teacher missing from Batley Grammar School, in hiding somewhere with his family, in fear for his life, simply because he showed a picture of Mohammed in an educational context, and all Jahannam broke loose.
But he’s yesterday’s news.
Hatun Tash is a thoughtful, intelligent, passionate Christian preacher. As an ex-Muslim, she has a lot to say about Islam and Jesus, or the prophet Isa, as she previously knew the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. And as she was preaching in Speakers’ Corner a week ago, she was stabbed.
Some were quick – perhaps too quick – to blame Islamists for the attack (which was, let’s be honest, attempted murder), but as the BBC point out, she was in Speakers’ Corner wearing a Charlie Hebdo T-shirt. In fact, that’s all the BBC tells us, so we are left infer that Hatun Tash was stabbed by someone who objected to a satirical magazine which once caricatured Mohammed on its front cover: there was no mention of Hatun Tash’s faith, no mention of her being a convert from Islam, no mention of her preaching, and there has been no update to the article at all. We are simply told that she had the audacity to wear a Charlie Hebdo T-shirt in Speakers’ Corner, which was awfully foul and hateful, if not bigoted and racist, and so ‘she had it coming’. The words of Det Supt Alex Bingley are left hanging: “I would ask people not to speculate on the motive for the attack until we have established the full facts.”
So people don’t speculate, for that would be Islamophobic. Or perhaps the speculation that it would be Islamophobic to speculate would be Islamophobic.
Yet we have the words of Hatun Tash herself: she told The Timesthat Speakers’ Corner has become a hostile and dangerous place for Evangelical Christians. She has been verbally and physically assaulted at Speakers’ Corner before, and alleges she has been arrested and detained by the Metropolitan Police for expressing opinions which one may no longer apparently express in Speakers’ Corner – that is, opinions which stir up ‘hate’.
She said: “I am upset and disturbed by what has happened to me. I am asking myself if have done anything wrong? I am convinced I have not broken any law or incited hate. All I did was question Islam and I wanted to debate discuss and to tell people about Jesus Christ. Speakers’ Corner is a great place to do this, it is a shame that this has happened at the home of freedom of speech.”
She added: “I can’t believe this has happened in broad daylight at Speakers’ Corner. You do not expect such things to happen in Great Britain. My attacker was not even afraid of the police as he did it right in front of them. It is heartbreaking that we live in a society where police do not want to arrest a Muslim for fear of being called ‘Islamophobic’.”
You can hear more HERE (age-restricted: available only on YouTube).
Hatun Tash is being supported by the Christian Legal Centre with her legal action against the police.
She is not supported by the Mayor Of London, Sadiq Khan, who said last year that he supports the arrest and ejection of preachers like Hatun Tash – even from Speakers’ Corner – over those who threaten violence and breach the peace:
As you know, freedom of speech is a principle that I hold dear. One of the best things about London is the fierce way in which we protect this right and people’s ability to exercise it. However, as I’m sure you will appreciate, the police have to balance this right with managing behaviour that could lead to public disorder. It is crucial that healthy debates do not lead to violence, and I support the rights of police officers to remove individuals in order to prevent a breach of the peace.
She is not being supported by any senior politicians (in Government or Opposition) in her robust defence of the freedoms of speech and expression.
And she is not being supported by any Bishops of the Church of England, who have no time for this sort of interfaith dialogue; no time for debating the Qur’an or preaching the gospel of Christ in the public realm like St Paul used to do; and no time to demand that Speakers’ Corner – that national, indeed global bastion of free speech – remains free from a backdoor blasphemy law.
whatyareckon 