Muslim cleric, Abu Hamza, is currently standing trial at the Old Bailey, charged with having incited racial hatred and with having solicited murder in statements that he is alleged to have made in sermons he delivered at the Finsbury Park mosque when an imam there.
Today’s Times reports that Mr Hamza’s counsel, Edward Fitzgerald QC, is running the defence that the statements made by his client in his sermons that have been construed as criminal in intent could not possibly have been so, since all Mr Hamza was doing was quoting from the Koran and other sacred Muslim texts.
‘It is said he was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Koran’, Mr Fitzgerald is reported to have explained on Mr Hamza’s behalf.
One such statement, whose purpose in Mr Hamza's having quoted which is at issue, comes from the Koran. It runs: ‘Fighting is ordained for you, though you dislike it. You may dislike something although it is good for you, or like something although it is bad for you: God knows and you do not.’ (Chapter 2, verse 216)
A second comes from the Hadith, the compendium of sayings attributed to Muhammed. It runs: ‘The trees will call out to the Muslims “There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him”.’
In further exoneration of his client, Mr Fitzgerald is reported to have observed that all the great monotheistic religions have scriptures that contain “the language of blood and retribution”.
The trial continues.
Comments (1)
‘The trees will call out to the Muslims “There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him”.’
Surely, if the PC brigade were to follow their own rules they now have no option but to ban the Koran?
Posted by John East | January 21, 2006 12:33 PM
Posted on January 21, 2006 12:33