A U.K. pastor was arrested and held in prison for 13 hours after he compared Christianity and Islam outside of Bristol University. According to police, the incident occurred during Ramadan.
Pastor Dia Moodley was street preaching in March when he was approached by a man who asked a question. Moodley told the man that there are “differences between the moral standards of the God of Islam and the Christian God,” Alliance Defending Freedom U.K. explained.
Moodley also expressed his view in binary sex, describing that God created humans male and female.
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An unknown individual later pushed him off his short stepladder while another took a sign from him.
Despite his assault, the police arrested Moodley for the “views he had shared,” seemingly not interested in the attack against him.
He was arrested on suspicion of committing racially or religiously aggravated harassment without violence under Section 31(1)(c) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, the legal group described.
Following his arrest, Bristol University told the police to destroy four of Moodley’s signs, an action the police later apologized for.
Moodley said that “two-tier policing” is a “reality that Christians in the U.K. have been experiencing for years.”
“It shouldn’t be for the state to decide which religions and ideologies must not be discussed or critiqued in the public street. The result is the normalisation of a two-tier society where some beliefs and ideologies are valued and protected, while others are undermined and outlawed,” he said, noting that the “world is looking at the dismal state of free speech in the U.K. with shock. What happened to me reflects a wider trend of increasing state censorship in the U.K. and across the West.”
The investigation into Moodley was dropped with the help of ADF, who have also aided him in developing a complaint against the police for their treatment of him, including the destruction of his signs.
This article originally appeared on American Faith, and is reposted with permission.
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