The Abuses of Religious Law

The National Secular Society has lodged a complaint against Cherie Booth, QC, (Tony Blair’s wife) for ruling to keep a violent man out of jail because he was “religious”.

Shamso Miah, 25, of Redbridge, east London, broke a man’s jaw following a row in a bank queue.
Sitting as a judge, Ms Booth – wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair – said she would suspend his sentence on the basis of his religious belief.

Also in the Telegraph:

Shamso Miah had left a mosque when he grabbed Mohammed Furcan and punched him. The thug ran outside but Furcan chased after him and demanded to know why he had been struck. Miah punched him again.

The National Secular Society claims her attitude was discriminatory and unjust:

Terry Sanderson, the president of the National Secular Society, which has protested to the Office for Judicial Complaints, says: “This seems to indicate that she would not have treated a non-religious person with the same latitude. We think this is discriminatory and unjust.”

Does it also show that Blair judged against the victim, Mohammed Furcan, because she deemed him to be less religious than the thug who broke his jaw?

This entry was posted in Crime, Secularism. Bookmark the permalink. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

4 Comments

  1. Posted February 4, 2010 at 11:30 AM | Permalink

    Does it also show that Blair judged against the victim, Mohammed Furcan, because she deemed him to be less religious than the thug who broke his jaw?

    Yes it does.

    I wonder how the victim feels after his attacker is effectively let off for breaking his jaw, because he is a “religious” man and should know better?

  2. Posted February 4, 2010 at 11:51 AM | Permalink

    This is a gross example of religious discrimination. Had the victim been a Catholic, I wonder whether Judge Blair would have been as clement, on the basis that the victim’s religiosity was, erm, “even more appropriately religious”.

  3. Don
    Posted February 4, 2010 at 6:37 PM | Permalink

    Aren’t religious people supposed to have a better grip of right and wrong than the non-religious? Surely a more stringent sentence is in order.

    On the other hand, establishing a precedent that religiosity is a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card might prove helpful to Cherie’s hubby one day.

    (Yeah, dreaming. I know.)

  4. bananabrain
    Posted February 5, 2010 at 9:49 AM | Permalink

    duh, duh, duh. on the other hand, apparently that’s the normal sentence in this sort of situation, it’s possible that it’s just been reported so as to highlight the “apparently soft on muslims” angle which is being picked up in the media and the agenda of the nss.

    b’shalom

    bananabrain

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Subscribe without commenting