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A 79-year-old Northern Ireland pastor is facing prosecution for calling the Muslim religion “satanic” and saying Islam was a brainchild of demonic forces in hell.
Pastor James McConnell of the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in Belfast delivered the fiery sermons in May. They’re coming to light once again because authorities have just determined that they’re controversial enough to warrant a court hearing.
Among his remarks, the Blaze reported: “The Muslim religion was created many hundreds of years after Christ. Muhammad, the Islam prophet, was born around the year A.D. 570, but Muslims believe that Islam is the true religion. Now people say there are good Muslims in Britain. That may be so, but I don’t trust them.”
He also spoke of the differences between Islam and Christianity.
“Islam’s ideas about God, about humanity, about salvation are vastly different from the teaching of the holy scriptures,” he said. “Islam is heathen. Islam is satanic. Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell.”
After his sermon, police were called to investigate McConnell for a hate crime. And a spokesman for the Public Prosecution Service in North Ireland alleged McConnell broke provisions enacted in 2003 that bar individuals from “sending, or causing to be sent, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that [is] grossly offensive.”
McConnell, after delivering the sermon, has retired from his tabernacle but still refuses to back off his comments or, as he puts it, “be gagged” by the politically correct, the Blaze reported.
“The police tried to shut me up and tell me what to preach,” he said, the Guardian reported. “It’s ridiculous. I believe in freedom of speech. I’m going to keep on preaching the gospel. I have nothing against Muslims, I have never hated Muslims, I have never hated anyone. But I am against what Muslims believe.”
“Mideast Beast” lays out the scriptural claim for an Islamic antichrist.
McConnell’s case is going to court – and it’s not the first time a Northern Ireland individual faces prosecution for Christian faith. Ashers Baking Company was convicted of discrimination for refusing to bake a cake with a pro-“gay”-marriage message, the Blaze said.