The Thought Police Are Coming

Samina Mali has been given a suspended sentence at the Old Bailey. In some respects, she was lucky. She could have gone to prison. And what was her crime? Talking arse, basically.

She said:

"The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom."

And:

"Watching videos by my Muslim brothers in Iraq, yep the beheading ones, watching video messages by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri and other videos which show massacres of the kaffirs."

She also wrote "Lengthy ramblings about firing rocket launchers and "taking part in the blessed forgotten sacred death of Jihad".

Talking about jihad, and rambling on about martyrdom is indicative either of naivete or an ultimately pointless commitment to an extreme form of religion. However talking and writing about these things is just that – talking and writing about them. It is not going out and committing those acts. She has been convicted based on poorly expressed motivations. Basically, she has been convicted for her thoughts. Cue a hundred references to Minority Report and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The scary thing is, though, if you are starting to prosecute people for their thoughts, then those comparisons are valid.

Mali should be able to say what she likes about jihad etc – that is a crucial part of free speech. And that right shouldn’t be taken away, because as soon as you do, it is only a matter of time before everyone else loses the right to call her a twat because of what she says.