Ignorance, naivete, dhimmitude, wishful thinking — you name it, it’s in this one. Absurd Britannia Alert: “Secular society upset by Judge Cherie decision,” by Jerome Taylor in The Independent, February 4 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A senior judge could be called on to investigate a complaint that Cherie Blair handed down a more lenient sentence to a man who had been convicted of fracturing a person’s jaw because he was religious.
Mrs Blair, a devout Roman Catholic who sits as a part time judge under the title Cherie Booth QC, spared Shamso Miah from jail last month after he was convicted of assaulting a person at a bank queue in east London.
The 25-year-old from Redbridge, north-east London, was given a two-year suspended sentence instead of a six-month jail term because, Mrs Blair said, he was a “religious person” who had not been in trouble before.
In response the National Secular Society made an official objection to the Judicial Complaints Office which handles complaints against members of the judiciary. Last night the OJC said the complaint was being “considered under the Judicial Discipline Regulations”. If it finds that Mrs Blair may have breached those regulations, a senior judge would then be brought in to investigate and could recommend formal disciplinary action.
Mrs Blair was hearing the case at the Inner London Crown Court on 23 January. The court heard how Mr Miah, who described himself as a devout Muslim, had punched Mohammed Furcan in the face following an argument with over who was first in a queue at a bank.
CCTV captured Mr Miah punching Mr Furcan in the face before running out the bank. When Mr Furcan followed him to demand why he had been hit, Mr Miah lashed out again knocking Mr Furcan to the pavement and breaking his jaw.
In court Mr Miah pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm. At sentencing, Mrs Blair appeared to take into account Mr Miah’s religious convictions as a partial reason for imposing a more lenient sentence.
“I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before,” she said. “You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank. You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.” […]
Jonathan Bartley, from the liberal Christian think-tank Ekklesia, agreed. “You can’t pretend religion is an irrelevant factor in assessing someone’s behaviour because faith will always have some sort of an impact on how we behave,” he said. “However it would be very wrong to assume that just because a person is religious they will automatically be a good person. You only have to look back through history to know that is not the case.”