I was pleased to see that Kevin Crehan, 34, from Knowle, was jailed for 12 months and Mark Bennett, 48, from Patchway, for nine months for “religiously aggravated public order offences.” These included shouting abuse at a member of the Jamia mosque in Totterdown and for tying rashers of bacon to door handles. If I’d been the judge, I’d have doubled the sentences on the grounds that they were also complete idiots, although if being an idiot was a crime we’d need a new prison in every district in the land.
I have personal experience of visiting this particular mosque during my previous incarnation as a civil servants and the Imam was a proper gent who was very helpful and served us tea and biscuits, despite me forgetting to remove my shoes as I entered the building. Whilst I will never understand anyone’s superstitious religious beliefs, I would never deny anyone’s right to hold them, so long as they in no way affect my life. But I wonder what Messrs Crehan and Bennett were trying to achieve.
From my point of view, a bacon sandwich is one of life’s great joys. I also understand that some religious folk won’t eat pork. Well, that’s their loss and in this case would have provided additional rashers for my sarnies. But not if they’d been tied to door handles, left in the elements. The conversation probably went: “Right. We’ll sort out these muslamics. The only language they understand is bacon, so I’ll pop down to the local Tesco and buy a pack. Then, I’ll remove some rashers and (guffaws loudly) tie them to the door handles of a mosque I don’t live anywhere near and has never done anyone any harm, least of all the good people of Totterdown who live by the motto live and let live. That’ll show ’em”.
Without wishing to insult pond life, these two buffoons are pond life and not only that they are pond life in prison. Well, what were they expecting? The freedom of Bristol? Knighthoods? No, of course not. They weren’t thinking anything at all. They just wanted to upset some ordinary people who believe in something that they don’t.
We can have a debate about religion in general and islam in particular if we want, hopefully a more rational one than the nonsense perpetrated by these chaps. I’d certainly like to do that in my quest to see a secular country and a secular world, the only way to end much of the traumas engulfing the entire world. But the bacon attack on the Totterdown mosque is probably not the way forward.
