Sharia law, enforced by British police
by Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack, The Conservative Woman:
SPEAKERS’ Corner in Hyde Park is the oldest free speech platform in the world. It has been a free speech focus since the days of public hanging when the condemned could make a final speech from the gallows at nearby Tyburn. Used throughout the years as place of protest, an Act of Parliament in 1842 set aside this London space for public speaking. Since then speakers of every type and persuasion have been able go there and sound off, present their arguments and counter the hecklers.
George Orwell called it ‘one of the minor wonders of the world’ and said that he had listened there to ‘Indian nationalists, temperance reformers, Communists, Trotskyists, the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), the Catholic Evidence Society, freethinkers, vegetarians, Mormons, the Salvation Army, the Church Army, and a large variety of plain lunatics’.
From the politically and socially motivated to the outright eccentric, Speakers’ Corner has accommodated them all. No longer. Late last month a Christian preacher was removed by police and held in custody overnight before finally being released without charge. Why did the police take action? She was being critical of Islam.
Hatun Tash regularly preaches at Speakers’ Corner. She is very well informed regarding Islamic apologetics and is expert in engaging in the cut-and-thrust of debate that traditionally occurs there. Although a relatively small woman, she has a strong presence and refuses to be intimidated by the crowds of mostly Muslim men who surround and heckle her.
As reported in The Conservative Woman at the time, Hatun was escorted out of Speakers’ Corner by police in September last year because she was being critical of Islam. Before the latest incident she had been warned that there were Muslims who wanted to kill her and that it was therefore dangerous for her to attend Speakers’ Corner and openly criticise Islam. But Hatun is made of sterner stuff than most and refuses to knuckle under to intimidation. Even though she has been physically assaulted she continues to preach there every week. Hatun used to be a Muslim herself and spent the first 27 years of her life in a Muslim country, so she knows it from the inside. Today she feels that she has a calling to preach to Muslims, and she is very effective in her ministry.
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