Thread by @StarkNakedBrief

It might be a crude comment to make but...

If Muslims were treated like Christians, parts of Britain would likely be on fire by now.

A look at the quiet "war" authorities are waging against British Christians.

Thread 🧵

Back in May, The Telegraph published a curious report about a group of Christians in south-west London. It didn’t make much of a splash online, but it marked a shift in the way our authorities are dealing with religious advocacy.

The Labour-run Rushmoor Borough Council had attempted to secure an injunction to ban Christians not just from preaching in two local town centres, but from praying and handing out leaflets altogether.

Their justification? The preachers were “offensive” and had caused “alarm and distress” to passers-by.

Under the terms of the drafted injunction, Christians would have been banned from praying for anyone “without their prior permission,” handing out leaflets or Bibles, and even placing hands on someone during prayer with consent.

This included bans on approaching people to discuss Christianity and preaching sermons deemed “hostile” towards anyone with a protected characteristic, such as age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation.

It marked yet another moment where authorities prioritised emotion over a basic human right, placing supposed “distress” above freedom of expression—an arguably childish impulse, born under the rubric of modern progressivism.

An injunction is a civil court order that can compel someone to stop doing something. Unlike Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs), which councils can issue directly to curb “nuisance”, injunctions must be granted by a judge.

Rushmoor Council, under Labour leader Gareth Williams, opted for the latter, attempting to weaponise legislation to silence preachers in a way we haven’t quite seen before.

If a judge had granted the injunction, Christians in breach of the order could have been jailed for up to 2 years.

Such paradoxically nannying yet bullying conduct hasn’t been exclusive to Labour Party politicians either...

Last month, the Kingsborough Centre, a Pentecostal church, successfully overturned Conservative-led Hillingdon Borough Council’s PSPO that had criminalised much of its outreach activity.

In 2023, Hillingdon Council and its leader Ian Edwards imposed a PSPO in Uxbridge town centre. The order banned religious groups from preaching with amplification, handing out leaflets, and even displaying Bible verses in public.

Breaching a PSPO is a criminal offence. It can result in arrest, a £100 on-the-spot fine, and even prison time if someone refuses to pay (at which point the fine can rise to £1,000).

Perhaps the kicker is that they can last for 3 years and be extended indefinitely.

When ministers introduced PSPOs in 2014 under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, many justified them citing problems with street drinking, dog fouling, and aggressive begging.

What they didn’t say was that local authorities would later use it to suppress religious expression and censor speech in public spaces.

And all of this is happening against a backdrop of what some have called blatant “two-tier justice”.

Take 60-year-old miner John Steele. Last month, police arrested him after he asked a Muslim woman a question about the Quran and domestic violence.

In March last year, Avon and Somerset Police arrested Dia Moodley for “religiously aggravated harassment without violence” after he spoke of the moral differences between Christianity and Islam in response to a question from a Muslim man.

In June 2021, police arrested David McConnell under Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 for “insulting” a member of the public in Leeds city centre. He had “misgendered” a biological male who identified as a trans woman.

Some other Christian arrests to consider: Hatun Tash, Ian Sleeper, Angus Cameron, John Dunn, Shaun O’Sullivan, David Lynn, Mike Overd, Don Karns, Mike Stockwell, AJ Clarke, and Hazel Lewis—all occurring in the last few years...

But the ordeal Northamptonshire Police subjected Conservative councillor Anthony Stevens to, however, really puts the prosecution into context.

In August 2023, police arrested Anthony at his home, in front of his family, not for something he said, but for something he retweeted.

The post concerned a video criticising how police treated Christian street preacher Oluwole Ilisanmi, who was arrested by Sir Sadiq Khan’s Metropolitan Police in Southgate, London, in 2019.

Indeed, the palpable imbalance, of course, extends to central government.

Nick Tolson, a former government faith adviser, said in an interview last year that:

In other words, if there’s an act of vandalism committed against a Christian church it is not assumed to be driven by hate. Compare that to an act of vandalism against a Mosque, and it is.

It is a worldview often underscored by mainstream coverage—just look at how the BBC reported vandalism on a churchyard and mosque earlier this year. These stories were published two months apart.

Full breakdown—of course, with source links so you can check the dets yourself:

news.starknakedbrief.co.uk/p/if-muslims-w…

*persecution