Pastor James McConnell is back in business as an Evangelical preacher having been found not guilty on a couple of slightly obscure charges (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). But the gist of the thing was that in the course of a sermon at the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in Belfast, he described Islam as ‘Satanic’, and was duly hauled up before a magistrates’ court. Unusually for Northern Ireland these days, the judge Liam McNally simply observed that the heat of his rhetoric had caused him to ‘lose the run of himself’ but that ‘It is not the task of the criminal law to censor offensive utterances.’ O si sic omnes.
There were a few interesting features of the thing, not least that the character witnesses for Pastor McConnell included (predictably) the DUP’s Sammy Wilson and (less predictably) Fr Pat McCafferty, a Catholic priest and (surprisingly) an imam, Muhammad Al Hussaini, who travelled from London to offer support. Pastor McConnell, in a similarly eirenic spirit, says that he did not intend to hurt innocent Muslims; it was just the theology he objected to. Indeed, as so often, the pastor strikes one as a genuinely nice man.
Now there is only one – actually, make that two – words you need to take on board in all this. ‘Evangelical’ and ‘sermon’. Actually make that four: ‘Northern Ireland’. Pastor McConnell is 78. In the context of Northern Ireland, where sectarianism of a Christian variety is as invariable as rain, calling Islam ‘Satanic’ in a sermon is par for the course, pretty small beer really.
Good God, when you think of the rhetorical heights the late Ian Paisley could reach on the subject of Catholicism – ‘Scarlet Woman…whore of Babylon, Old Redsocks’ – Northern Irish Muslims can consider themselves to have got off lightly given the rich tradition of Protestant evangelical invective. They may not have been asked lately whether they are Catholic Muslims or Protestant Muslims in the manner of the time honoured question put to Jews in Northern Ireland, but they can hardly be surprised that when a pastor with a literalist approach to scripture turns his attention to the Koran he is not the man to bottle up his views.
Given the nature of parts of the Koran and the frank character of Presbyterian ministers, why the rather sinister Public Prosecution Service took the action it did – given the traditions of the place – is beyond me. In fact, the nice imam who went from London to testify in Mr McConnell’s defence put the matter rather well. Mr al Hussaini observed that Pastor McConnell had robustly criticised Fr Pat McCafferty’s religion in the past, yet ‘he didn’t go crying off to the police. He engaged with Christian grace and openness and honesty. They had very frank, robust disagreements but at the same time, he engaged in a manner that allowed a 20-year friendship.’ He went on to make the entirely sensible observation: ‘we need to create an environment where we can talk quite frankly about these questions and in so doing, we need to defend civil society’s role in this and not allow a creeping judicial role in constraining debate and discussion’.’
Dead right. The case was a disgrace and should never have been brought, but at least it has made one thing clear: we are not under a legal obligation to be nice about each other.
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