Mark Durie, who was deeply involved in the Australia religious vilification case, has sent me this message about an element of the judge’s decision I noted below: that one of the pastors is supposed to have called Muslims “demons.” Surprise! He didn’t say that:
The finding is hard to make sense of in places, e.g. Scot at one point in the seminar that in the Qur’an there were jinn (spirit beings) which became Muslims in response to the message of Islam. However, in his summary the judge appears to interpret this as Scot saying that Muslims are demons. So “Some demons are Muslims” becomes “Muslims are demons”! Perhaps I have missed something here!
The Judge’s phrase that Scot said “Muslims are demons” has now gone into the media reports.The reasons for the findings are not yet available – hopefully next week. Penalties will be handed down in January some time.
Finding of court costs against the two Daniels could involve hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Durie has also kindly sent along this pdf containing a summary of the finding.