Not in Saudi Arabia – in Carlisle!

From here:

A former soldier has been sentenced to 70 days in prison for setting fire to a copy of Muslim holy book the Koran in the centre of Carlisle.

Andrew Ryan had previously admitted religiously aggravated harassment and theft of a Koran from a library.

Ryan was exercising a form of free speech – his version of Fatwa 40378 – a commodity that is evidently in short supply in the politically correct madhouse that has become the UK.

As a Christian, I can’t bring myself to endorse the deliberate desecration of another religion’s paraphernalia – but I’m finding that increasingly difficult to say with conviction.

A police inspector sagely noted:

After sentencing, Insp Paul Marshall, of Cumbria Police, said: “This incident was highly unusual for Cumbria as we have such low levels of hate crime in the county.”

This leads one to speculate on whether Inspector Marshall would recognise a “hate crime” – which surely has to involve someone being injured as opposed to merely offended – if it paraded itself in front of him and took up lodging in his helmet.