London’s Metropolitan Police recently paid a $13,100 settlement to a Christian street preacher they arrested after her preaching angered a Muslim mob — the second such settlement the bobbies have paid her in two years.
Hatun Tash, a former Muslim, “regularly critiques and debates the Qur’an and Islam at Speakers’ Corner,” a section of Hyde Park set aside for free speech and demonstrations, according to a press release from Christian Concern, whose legal arm, the Christian Legal Centre, represented Tash.
Tash, director of the ministry Defend Christ Critique Islam (DCCI), has a YouTube channel with almost 700,000 subscribers. She claims to have seen “over 1,000 ex-Muslims” become Christians in Great Britain and to be “discipling many people” around the world.
Holey Qur’an
Needless to say, Tash is no shrinking violet. One of the props she uses in her demonstrations is a Qur’an with holes drilled in it, which represents “the growing thinking, even among Islamic scholars such as Sheikh Yasir Qadhi, that the ‘standard [Islamic] narrative has holes in it,’” explained the press release.
On June 26, 2022, Tash was setting up for her usual preaching in Speakers’ Corner when a man stole her Qur’an, whereupon her friends called the police. Christian Concern, with video to back up its claims, recounted:
However, as the police arrived, instead of establishing what had happened, and without any discussion, an officer tried to draw her away from the growing crowd.
Refusing to move from where she planned to preach, the officers then put her in a hold and began to frog-march her through the crowds to waiting police vans.
Crowds of Muslims, laughed, crowed, filmed, pursued, mocked and assaulted Miss Tash as she was led away.
The police did nothing to control the crowd or deal with any of the violent intimidation.
Tash was stuffed into a police van, her belongings left behind at Speakers’ Corner. The officers gave her stolen Qur’an to a Muslim man, who proudly displayed it for a camera.
Police told Tash she was being arrested for “criminal damage” (to her own property?) and for sporting a T-shirt bearing a mocking cartoon of Mohammed.
When she arrived at the police station, she was strip-searched, had her eyeglasses removed, and was “deprived of sleep and interrogated at 4am,” reported Christian Concern. After 15 hours in custody, she was released with the assurance that no further action would be taken against her.
Bobbies Socked
Tash then took her own legal action. The press release states that her
lawyers argued that her rights had been breached under Articles 9 & 10 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Under law the police can only interfere with an individual’s free speech rights for “convincing and compelling reasons” and in a proportionate way.
Lawyers said that “Even if arrest and detention is deemed lawful initially it may subsequently become unlawful” and that “the burden is on the police to show that the detention was lawful ‘minute by minute.’”
Unable to show that Tash’s detention was lawful at all times, the police chose to settle the case last month and pay her $13,100.
Repeat Offenders
The same outfit shelled out the same settlement — along with an apology — to Tash in 2022 for the same offense.
In May 2021, an angry Muslim mob that had already assaulted some passing Jews and called for Jews’ “blood” took offense at Tash’s preaching, which, ironically, had to do with the shedding of a certain Jew’s blood. In full view of the police, the mob began threatening Tash while telling the cops to “go away.”
And what did the police do? They arrested Tash for “breaching the peace,” hauled her off to the station, and kept her for 24 hours before releasing her without charges. One officer confessed to a Muslim man that they’d removed Tash because “there’s one of her and fifty-odd of you,” to which the man replied, “Appreciate that man, thanks.”
At the time, Christian Concern’s head of public policy, Tim Dieppe, warned that, if the police policy of surrendering to the mob continued, “the mob [will] have achieved their aim of Speakers’ Corner becoming Sharia Corner.”
That would certainly appear to be the case, and not just because of Tash’s second arrest. In July 2021, she “was repeatedly stabbed by a man in an Islamic robe in front of the police,” wrote Christian Concern. “Disturbingly, the attacker has never been caught and is believed to have escaped abroad.”
The police did come to Tash’s aid in one instance — and in a big way. In December 2023, they arrested an Islamic terrorist who had planned to murder Tash; the man was later sentenced to at least 24 years in prison.
Still, the overall pattern is one of capitulation to Muslim crowds regardless of the rights of Christians. Tash called it “two-tiered policing.”
Gospel Truth
With the Muslims and the cops both against her, why does Tash keep doing what she does? Her explanation:
I don’t think it’s a crime to tell people the good news. I don’t think it is a crime to tell people that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only solution to humanity.
I am someone who is convinced by it, and as long as I breathe out and breath[e] in, I will use that opportunity to tell the world the glorious gospel I have. It is given freely, therefore I will pass it around freely.
