Viral message claims two men sentenced to prison for spray painting mosque
A message is circulating the Internet that claims two men had been sentenced to 6 (or 12) months imprisonment for spray painting a poppy on a mosque, while also highlighting two crimes committed by Muslim men that received significantly lesser sentences.
MISSING CONTEXT
An instance of the message can be seen below.
In May 2010 Tohseef Shah spray painted a British War Memorial with “islam will dominate osama is coming” he was fined £50 & walked free from court. In November 2010, Emdadur Choudhury burned a Poppy during the. 2mins silence. He too was given a fine, £500 and walked free from court. Today, 2 men have been sentenced to 12 months in prison for spray painting a Poppy on a mosque. Pass this on if you think its a disgrace.
The specific stories mentioned in the message are mostly true (but the fines given to the two Muslim men have been mixed up). It was Tohseef Shah who was fined £500 in compensation, £85 court costs and two year conditional discharge for spray painting a memorial statue, and Emdadur Choudhury was fined £50 for setting alight a poppy, and finally it is also true that two men have been imprisoned for 12 months for spray painting a mosque. The two men, Steven James Vasey, 32, and 24-year-old Anthony Donald Smith were convicted in Durham in 2011.
At first glance, one may justifiably feel angry at this apparent injustice which makes the British justice system appear soft on racial crimes committed by minorities and harsher when they are carried out by white people. But as with all brief and racially charged messages circulating the Internet, this message does not tell the whole story.
Firstly, the two men sentenced to 12 months in Durham for spray painting a poppy on a mosque actually carried out a number of other crimes conveniently omitted by the message above. The two men spray painted the letters EDL and NEI (North East Infidels) onto the mosque and images of the St. George flag. They also defaced other properties owned by Muslims and threw a brick through a window of another (which, ironically enough, was selling poppies at the time). Both admitted their string of attacks were racially motivated and pre-planned – factors that would also likely be considered during sentencing.
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This is in contrast to Tohseef Shah who’s actions were deemed to be political and not racial. Racially motivated crimes often receive heftier sentences and despite, for example, Emdadur Choudhury’s crime of poppy burning arguably being a much more controversial incident, it is strictly in the eyes of the law that the two men from Durham committed a more heinous crime.
There are other facts inconvenient to the narrative of the above message that have also been omitted. For example, the numerous cases of racially motivated crimes committed by white people that – just like the poppy burning and spray painting offences committed by Muslim men – that too were met with only relatively minor punitive consequences. For example the case of Wayne Havercroft who was only fined for leaving a pigs head outside a proposed location for a mosque and a spray painted sign saying “No Mosque here. EDL” – or the Sunderland man who was only fined for spray painting a mosque in retaliation on his Muslim father, or countless racially aggravated assaults that happen across the UK that are met only with fines.
Sentencing is based on many different factors, of which the defendants skin colour plays no part, but which include the severity of the crime, the motivation of the crime, the criminal records of the defendants and the specific judge handing the sentence.
Of course there will be what many perceive to be lighter sentences and heavier sentences given for what appear to be similar crimes of similar severity, and this can be exemplified by cherry picking certain cases from across the country to highlight your agenda. One could just as easily pick out another 3 cases to give the impression that the justice system is harsh on ethnic minorities and kinder on white people.
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This message has picked three – albeit mostly true – stories because they fit the overall meaning the message attempts to convey – hatred towards what the message creator believes to be a racially corrupt/soft justice system. Whilst one could reasonally argue that the two men from Durham did receive a significantly harsher sentence than both the men in the other two stories, it should be noted that these are just three stories and does not necessarily accurately reflect the way the British justice system convicts people of differing faiths and races.
Of course we invite all of our readers to come to their own conclusions but they should do it with all the facts and not the limited information contained in this message. Circulating this message, however, is not advised [especially “without question” as irresponsibly mentioned in a later version of this hoax] because it is essentially racial propaganda which can potentially cause hatred and isolation towards ethnic minorities.
UPDATE:
This message has also later been included with the below meme. However this meme shows the Jami Mosque in Portsmouth. That was defaced in 2010, and one man was arrested on a public order offence for defacing the mosque. It is not connected to the Durham incident that occurred in 2011.
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