18 year old gets a year in prison for "baconizing" mosque

Has the UK gone mad?

www.bbc.com...

A teenage girl and 39-year old man who desecrated an Edinburgh mosque by attacking it with strips of bacon have both been jailed.

Chelsea Lambie, 18, from Paisley, was sentenced to 12 months and Douglas Cruikshank, from Galashiels, to nine months.

They attached bacon to door handles and threw strips inside Edinburgh's Central Mosque on 31 January 2013.

Really? A year in prison for putting bacon on door handles and throwing it in a mosque? Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how much prison time these two would have received if they'd spray painted graffiti on the side of a church? I'm guessing they wouldn't even have seen the inside of a jail cell.

This does not strike me as a crime worth 12 months in prison. In a muslim country, these two would have had their heads chopped off, but the UK is not a muslim country (last time I checked, anyways). Why the harsh sentence? You'd think community service (for a muslim cause) and probation would have been more appropriate?

This strikes me as totally disproportionate sentencing. What do you think? Am I just biased?

Agreed 100%. Don't believe in any jail time unless you are a repeat mass murderer. House arrest and counseling would do it and be cheaper even with assistance, and or some work or schooling. Also, included in the exceptions would be all who betray their oaths of office, they're mass murders too.

The people are free and need a good loving healing world.

Only crime here is wasting bacon

They were given the harsh sentence so nobody could say they were racist or intolerant. They fear retaliation.

That's the fact of it IMO. They sentenced out of fear and that should not happen to anyone. They are lucky they didn't get more.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

I do not agree with this sentence, like you I feel that it is disproportionate to the crime. Although, I have to say, I find the crime disgusting.

I do think that this crime would have been better suited to a punishment like maybe some community service of some sort? Cleaning public grounds, or something like that. Something that teaches them about respecting others without causing the taxpayers a fortune.

a reply to: Unity_99

Don't believe in any jail time unless you are a repeat mass murderer. House arrest and counseling would do it and be cheaper even with assistance, and or some work or schooling.

Only repeat mass murderers? How many free solo kills should we get?

a reply to: DeadSeraph

This is the charge? Or is that the summary by the media outlet? Yea, sure it's mean but I just wonder what the legal basis is.

The pair were accused of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner likely to cause fear and alarm.

Any religion that calls for people to be put to death just for their asinine, arbitrary rules can hang, as far as I'm concerned. Same with apologists.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

Your point is correct, they would have recieved community orders for graffitying a church as the british government does not see persecuting christians as a hate crime but it does see persecuting Muslims as such.
This ruling is unjust and a community order should have been handed out but of course we have no idea if this was part of a string of offences, remember about 4 years ago the young 16 year old scots lad whom was found knifed after being abducted by a group of muslims because he was going out with a girl from there community and her brother did not like that at all.
Barring that I can not say what I feel like saying this shows the british justice system doing what it does best, keeping its own people down.
We have always been a nation of immigrants being an island but we have always also been a nation with a deep sense of identity's and today more than perhaps anytime in near a thousand years we feel that identity under threat and when in helpless rage out own people act out of anger they are suppressed by a government and judiciary whom are increasingly out of tough with people's very strong feeling's and are acting like overlords making example sentences like these to try to disuage the rest of us and make us go back to our little holes to hide while they fill in the entrance and bury us alive.

Seriously? Why not just make them clean up the mess they made and then do some grounds work for the mosque? Oh, likely because there are religious rules preventing that. But that's the sort of solution they used to employ in the days of common sense.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

An act of stupidity that Karma has visited.

Jail time, imo, is excessive, there are alternative punishments less burdensome on the tax payer. I think the sentence may be to placate a portion of the population to help ensure things don't become inflamed.

Anybody in the UK know if any of the PETA protestors who threw blood at customers and smeared it all over thousands of dollars worth of merchandise at Burberry in London received a sentence this harsh?

I know it is not a fair comparison since the peta protestors assaulted actual people and destroyed private property.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

"We do not eat pork or even touch it. I felt very bad seeing this meat in my sacred place.

"It hurt my feelings when I saw this meat hanging inside the mosque in the worshipping area. It was very disturbing."

Well they certainly were both old enough to know better than do a child like thing like this. Sometimes people fail to understand that another culture feels very strongly about something we do not.

Maybe the sentence is long but you know almost no one serves anywhere near their sentences and the sentence length says someone cares that others most strongly held beliefs are not unimportant to us.

People behave so stupidly it is beyond my understanding.

originally posted by: Char-Lee
Sometimes people fail to understand that another culture feels very strongly about something we do not.

I agree.

Imagine if someone smeared aborted fetus remains on a church door and threw some inside... Would those of you who disagree with this sentence feel so offended if they got a year in jail?

I think either crime is horrific and the perpetrators should be generously punished.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

So, are they demolishing the mosque, or will they just put the bacon in the bin and wipe the door handles?

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

In that case, if they got a year in jail it might be related to how they procured the remains. I have trouble believing that anyone would sentence people to a year in jail for anti-Christian hate crimes. They might receive penalties related to other crimes like vandalism or arson or something committed in commission of their anti-Christian crime, but they aren't going to be charged with an anti-Christian hate crime. Not in today's world. That's like being charged with anti-white racism; it just almost never happens.

Any of you ever heard a Muslim rant about pork? and the folks that eat it?

a reply to: chr0naut

That's a good question. Now that it's been defiled shouldn't they stone the mosque or something? Maybe a few of them can beat their wives or something to atone.

Either way I'm sure Dr. Cooper will drop by to blame the Jews.

The sentence seems excessive, whole hog if you will.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

One is common food in the country they choose to live and the other is very controversial human tissue.

They're not equal, fetal remains and bacon.

Apples and oranges.

Remember that England, the UK, does have laws that do restrict speech and any provocative or speech that some would find offensive can result in harsh fines.

But that being said, the act in itself is very distasteful, as it shows a lack of respect for another religion. You may not agree with such, but to outright do such, shows that the Western countries, are as intolerant as those Islamic states. Such as the Taliban that blew up centuries old Buddhist statues, cause it offended them.