London police reach settlement after arrest of street preacher who insulted Muslims

The Metropolitan Police recently paid a $13,100 settlement to a Christian street preacher arrested after his sermons angered a Muslim mob. This is the second settlement that Bobby and others have paid to her in the past two years.

Hatun Tash, a former Muslim, “regularly criticizes and discusses the Quran and Islam in Speaker's Corner, a corner of Hyde Park set aside for free speech and demonstrations.” and Christian Legal Center, representing Tash, according to a press release from the legal department Christian Concern.

Tash, director of the Department for the Defense of Islam (DCCI), has a YouTube channel with around 700,000 subscribers. She claims to have seen “more than 1,000 ex-Muslims” become Christians in the UK and “training many others” around the world.

holy quran

Needless to say, Tash is not a shrunken purple. One of the props she uses in her demonstrations is a Quran with a hole punched in it. This was explained in a press release as “even among Islamic scholars such as Sheikh Yasir Qadi, “there are holes in the standard (Islamic) narrative.''

On June 26, 2022, Tash was preparing for her usual sermon at Speaker's Corner when a man stole her Quran and her friend called the police. Christian Concern detailed the following with a video supporting its claims:

However, when the police arrived, instead of revealing what happened, without any discussion, the officers tried to separate her from the growing crowd.

When she refused to move from where she was scheduled to preach, the officers placed her in the hold and began frog-marching her through the crowd to a waiting police van.

Crowds of Muslims laughed, shouted, filmed, chased, taunted and assaulted Tash as he was led away.

Police did nothing to control the crowd or respond to the violent threats.

Tash was packed into a police van and his belongings were left at Speaker's Corner. The officers gave the Koran she had stolen to a Muslim man, who proudly displayed it to the camera.

Police told Tash that she was arrested on charges of “criminal damage” (to her own property?) and wearing a T-shirt with a caricature mocking Muhammad.

Upon arriving at the police station, she was stripped of her clothes, her glasses removed, “deprived of sleep and interrogated at 4 a.m.,” Christian Concern newspaper reported. After 15 hours in custody, she was released on an assurance that no further action would be taken.

bobby socks

Tash then took legal action of her own. The press release states that she

Lawyers argued that her rights had been violated under Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Under the law, police can only interfere with an individual's free speech rights for “compelling and compelling reasons” and only in a proportionate manner.

“Even if an arrest or detention initially appears to be legal, it may subsequently become illegal,'' the lawyers said, adding, “The burden is on us to prove, minute by minute, that the detention was lawful.'' It's up to the police,” he said.

Unable to prove that Tash's detention was always legal, police opted to settle the case last month and pay her $13,100.

repeat offender

The same organization paid Tash the same settlement in 2022 for the same charges, along with an apology.

In May 2021, angry Muslim mobs, who had already attacked passing Jews and demanded Jewish “blood”, were involved in Tash, which was ironically connected to shedding the blood of a particular Jew. was furious at his sermon. The mob began threatening Tash in front of the police, telling them to leave.

And what did the police do? They arrested Tash for “breaching the peace,” took him to the police station, held him for 24 hours, and then released him without charge. One police officer confessed to a Muslim man that he had removed Tash “because of his girlfriend and one of the 50 people,” to which the man replied, “Thank you, that man.”

At the time, Tim Dieppe, director of public policy for Christian Concern, said that if the police policy of surrendering to the mob continued, “the mob would have accomplished its goal of turning Speaker's Corner into Sharia Corner.'' “Dear,” he warned.

Tash's second arrest certainly isn't the only reason. In July 2021, she was “repeatedly stabbed in front of police by a man wearing Islamic robes,” Christian Concern wrote. “Unfortunately, the perpetrator has not yet been caught and is believed to have fled the country.”

The police helped Tash in some cases, but in a big way. In December 2023, they arrested an Islamic terrorist who was planning to kill Tash. This man was later sentenced to at least 24 years in prison.

Still, the overall pattern is one of capitulation to the Muslim crowd, regardless of Christian rights. Mr. Tash called this “two-tiered policing.”

gospel truth

Why does Tash continue to do this when both Muslims and the police are against her?Her explanation:

I don't think it's a crime to tell people the good news. I don't think it's a crime to tell people that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only solution for humanity.

I am a person who is convinced of that, and as long as I breathe out and breathe in, I am going to use that opportunity to share the glorious gospel that I have with the world. It's given to me for free, so I'll pass it around as I see fit.