A man who was put on trial after staging an anti-religion protest by ripping out pages from the Koran in front of Muslims has had the case against him dropped.

A jury at Leicester Crown Court failed to reach a verdict in the case against Peter James Crawford last month. The Crown Prosecution Service reviewed the evidence and a decision was made not to continue with a fresh trial. The case was dropped against Mr Crawford, 52, when the prosecution offered no evidence against him at a hearing.

Speaking this week, Mr Crawford's defence advocate during the trial, Steven Newcombe, said: "I think the prosecution made a sensible decision not to have a retrial in the light of the jury being deadlocked. There were other ways of dealing with this matter, rather than attempting to prosecute Mr Crawford in a crown court. He has learned a lesson and I'm sure he will conduct himself with a greater degree of sensitivity."

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said: "When jury cannot decide on a verdict, the prosecution must decide whether to seek a retrial on the basis of the same evidence. A number of factors must be taken into account, including the likely penalty if the defendant is found guilty, the time delay in securing a date for the retrial, the views of the victim, judiciary and police and the likelihood of another jury reaching a decision."

Leicester Mercury, 11 January 2013

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An atheist shocked Muslim volunteers at a stall promoting Islam when he ripped out pages from the Koran. Peter James Crawford (52) then threw the holy book onto the ground and told them: "Your religion is a load of b******s."

He is on trial at Leicester Crown Court accused of causing religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress, by demonstrating hostility based on membership of a particular religious group, Islam. He denies the charge.

The incident happened at the Islamic Information Centre's stall, near the Clock Tower in Leicester city centre, on a busy Saturday afternoon, on May 12.

Kamran Qayyum, an employee of the organisation, told the court: "We give out literature to create an awareness of Islam and engage with the public." He was with four volunteers when Crawford began pacing around nearby.

Mr Qayyum said: "He started tearing up pages from a book and they were going on the floor. He wasn't saying anything. The pages covered a lot of ground, they were everywhere. I then noticed Arabic inscriptions and realised it was the Koran. I knelt down and was picking up the papers when he threw the Koran down, just missing me."

Mr Qayyum said: "The Koran is sacred to us and we honour it. We also have a Bible on our stand and we show the Bible the same respect. One of the laws of the Koran is it shouldn't be on the floor, it should be high up and our hands should be clean when it's touched. I was shocked."

Mr Quyyum said after the defendant was arrested: "He made a signal to us, shaping his hand in the form of a gun, saying 'See you next Saturday'."

Defence advocate Steven Newcombe said: "There are many who oppose Islam. Did you take it he was expressing anti-Islamic views and disrespecting the religion?"

"Yes," said Mr Quyyum.

Mr Quyyum agreed that apart from a hand gesture – which Mr Newcombe suggested was the pointing of a finger rather than a gun gesture – the defendant did not threaten or provoke any violence.

Another stall volunteer, Zahid Hussein, said: "I saw him ripping up the book. I was in shock, disgusted. It's our life, our way of life and we live by that book – it's very sacred." He said Crawford told them their religion was "a load of b******s."

Crawford, of Mere Road, Spinney Hill, Leicester, claimed, in interview, he was expressing his disagreement with religion of any kind. He told the police it was his own copy of the Koran he tore up, and he would have done the same with a Bible as he did not understand either holy book and "hated" all religion. "I'm not against the people, just their religion," he said.

James Bide-Thomas, prosecuting, said: "The real issue is whether Crawford was insulting and whether it was a crime that we say he committed. It's tradition in this country of freedom of speech and people are entitled to say what they want, as long as it's not illegal in relation to the law, which prevents people going out to cause harassment, alarm or distress by insulting behaviour, basically upsetting people.

"It's for you to decide whether what he did was insulting or whether it was a legitimate piece of freedom of speech being exercised or if what he did was deliberately calculated to upset the people from the Islamic Information Centre."

The trial continues.

Leicester Mercury, 20 December 2012

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Daniel Pipes has a solution to the crisis provoked by the Innocence of Muslims film:

What would happen if publishers and managers of major media outlets reached a consensus – "Enough of this intimidation, we will publish the most famous Danish Muhammad cartoon every day, until the Islamists tire out and no longer riot"? What would happen if Korans were recurrently burned?

Would repetition inspire institutionalization, generate ever-more outraged responses, and offer a vehicle for Islamists to ride to greater power? Or would it lead to routinization, to a wearing out of Islamists, and a realization that violence is counter-productive to their cause?

I predict the latter. A Muhammad cartoon published each day, or Koranic desecrations on a quasi-regular basis, would make it harder for Islamists to mobilize Muslim mobs. Westerners could then once again treat Islam as they do other religions – freely, to criticize without fear. That would demonstrate to Islamists that Westerners will not capitulate, that they reject Islamic law, that they are ready to stand up for their values.

Fox News, 21 September 2012

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Telegraph blogger Ed West recommends a new report by former BBC journalist Dennis Sewell, A Question of Attitude: The BBC and Bias Beyond News, in which the author accuses the Beeb of abandoning impartiality in order to further its left-liberal political agenda and "cites a number of BBC programmes which have, he feels, been unjustifiably biased".

West offers us an egregious example: "Worst of all, perhaps, was Geert Wilders – Europe's Most Dangerous Man? (BBC Two – February 2011)." He quotes Sewell's attack on what he claims was the documentary's misrepresentation of Wilders' views:

Billed as a profile of the controversial Dutch politician, for much of the time it felt more like a character assassination.... More than once in the film, emphasis was placed on Wilders' supposed wish to have the Koran banned.... Wilders has many times explained and clarified his position on this – and indeed is briefly glimpsed in the film, trying to do so at a press conference. The truth of the matter is that, within the context of a discussion on banning the sale of Mein Kampf in Holland (a measure that was passed into law at the instigation of the Left), Wilders remarked that, if the Left were to be consistent, the logic of its arguments for banning Hitler's book should lead it also to seek a ban on the Koran, which contains passages that it should find just as odious as the passages in Mein Kampf that were so objectionable.

The reality is that in 2007, following an assault on Ehsan Jami of the Committee for Ex-Muslims, Wilders published an article in the Dutch daily newspaper Volkskrant headlined "Genoeg is genoeg: verbied de Koran" (Enough is enough: ban the Qur'an). You can read the original here and an English translation from Wilders' own website here. Wilders wrote:

Enough is enough. Let's put an end to all this politically correct twisting and turning.... The root of the problem is fascist Islam, the sick ideology of Allah and Mohammed as laid down in the Islamic Mein Kampf: the Koran. In this regard, the texts from the Koran speak for themselves.

In various suras Muslims are summoned to oppress, prosecute or kill Jews, Christians, renegades and non-believers, to beat and rape women and to establish a worldwide Islamic state through violence. I've lost count of the number of suras that incite Muslims to spread death and destruction.

Why don't we ban that miserable book? After all, we also decided to ban Mein Kampf! This would bring the message home to those who assaulted Jami and to other Islamists that in this country the Koran should never, absolutely never, be used as a source of inspiration or an excuse for violence....

I am fed up with Islam in the Netherlands: let's put a stop to the influx of Muslim immigrants. I am fed up with the worshipping of Allah and Mohammed in the Netherlands: let's put a stop to the building of mosques. I am fed up with the Koran in the Netherlands: let's ban that fascist book.

So, whatever weasel words the Dutch racist may have used subsequently, the fact is that Wilders did issue an explicit call for the Qur'an to be banned, as Sewell and West would have discovered if they'd checked the facts. But they obviously didn't bother. Yet they happily lecture the BBC about the need to avoid misrepresentation and political bias.

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Moments later, Gainesville Fire Rescue issued the church a citation for violating the city's fire ordinances.

Saturday's act of protest took place in spite of published reports that the Pentagon had urged Jones to reconsider, expressing concern that American soldiers in Afghanistan and elsewhere could be put at greater risk because of the act.

About 20 people gathered Saturday on church property at 5805 NW 37th Street about 5 p.m. for the planned burning. Several Gainesville police officers were stationed across the street from the church or were patrolling the area. A few people watched the scene, but there were no protesters.

Jones and another pastor demanded the release of the Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani from an Iranian prison. Jones said Nadarkhani faces execution.

Jones spoke at a podium that was far enough away that he could not be heard by people along 37th Street. The event was streamed live over the Internet.

After the speeches, copies of the Islamic holy book and an image depicting Muhammad were burned at about 5:50 p.m. in a portable fire pit. Shortly afterward, officers in two Gainesville Police Department cars drove onto the property. With them was a GFR official, who issued the citation.

Fire Chief Gene Prince, contacted by The Sun afterward, said Jones had approval for a burn but did not have the required authorization to burn books. Prince said Gainesville has restrictive fire ordinances, adding that books cannot be burned without authorization because of environmental concerns over the burning of glue and bindings in books.

The fine is $271, which includes court costs, Prince said.

Gainesville Sun, 29 April 2012

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