Christian Broadcasting Network

Dale Hurd
CBN News Senior Reporter
Website: Hurd on the Web

British Blogger Faces Arrest for Inciting “Racial Hatred”
January 14, 2008

A British newspaper reports that police in Bedfordshire want to arrest a conservative blogger for his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant statements.

The man’s website, Lionheart, takes a hard line against Islam and Muslim immigrants in Britain.
An email to the blogger from an officer with the Bedfordshire hate crimes unit reads, “The offence that I need to arrest you for is "Stir up Racial Hatred by displaying written material" contrary to sections 18(1) and 27(3) of the Public Order Act 1986. You will be arrested on SUSPICION of the offence.”

It’s an interesting story on many levels. The blogger, identified as 31 year old Paul Ray, describes himself as a former drug dealer and born again Christian, and says he fled his hometown of Dunstable because of death threats from the Pakistani Muslim community there. The death threats, as he told Dr. Phyllis Chesler in an interview, began after he became a police informer against what are described as “…Pakistani Muslim drug dealers…who addict British youth and whose profits fuel expensive lifestyles, paramilitary organizations, suicide terrorism, and religious hate speech” against the West. He writes, “I was an innocent British citizen trying to do good in my society based on my mistakes of the past that God had set me free from and then I ended up losing everything because of murdering gangs of Pakistani Moslems who are conducting a guerilla war around the area where I live.”

Ray reportedly left Britain two years ago. He planned to return to finalize his permanent departure from the U.K., but now faces arrest.

Some conservatives are refusing to support Ray because of allegations that he is a member or supporter of the British National Party. The BNP is a white supremacist party. Ray reportedly denies membership in the BNP and insists that he is being slandered.

On his website he writes, “I have not called for murder, war or bloodshed, as my title states “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword”, yet this Labour government wants to take the pen out of my hand and lock me in prison when I have done nothing wrong apart write words of truth on a computer screen for others to read.”