Readers of this blog may well recall a story about Abdullah Qureshi, a long distance Jew botherer, who, whilst off his face on booze, cocaine and magic mushrooms, travelled hundreds of miles from his home in the north of England to Stamford Hill in London where he physically attacked random Jews. Qureshi, who I called ‘Mo-Hammered’ in my earlier piece, was eventually convicted by the court of various racially motivated violence charges, although it took some Jewish community groups a lot of effort to get the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to do this as the CPS had previously in this case had appeared to be more than happy, Qureshi to face much lesser charges. I remarked at the time of ‘Mo-Hammered’s’ trial that this might indicate a double standard in the CPS as I can’t imagine a situation where had the victim of similar attacks been Muslim, that the CPS would be happy with the alleged attacker facing lesser charges.
Anyway, at long last Qureshi has been sentenced and it is, as expected by many, an interim hospital order. The court appointed and approved medics have said that Qureshi is mad.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism has reported on this case and said:
In December, Mr Qureshi was expected to be sentenced. However, this was halted following concerns surrounding his mental health. The court heard that Mr Qureshi suffered from anxiety and depression and that he had been hearing “internal voices” which ordered him to carry out the attacks.
Dr Bala Krishna, a specialist in forensic medicine, informed the court that, at the time of her assessment of Mr Qureshi, it was her opinion that he was “currently presenting psychotic symptoms,” namely “paranoia and auditory hallucinations, depressive symptoms, and anxiety,” adding that he needs “further assessment to be fully diagnosed”.
Dr Krishna further informed the court that Mr Qureshi revealed to her that he was under the influence of alcohol, cocaine, and psilocybin mushrooms at the time of the assaults.
Today, His Honour Judge Noel Lucas QC ordered an interim hospital order under Section 38 of the Mental Health Act 1983. Such an order is given when a person has been convicted but a court has been advised by doctors that the person has a mental health issue that requires hospital treatment before sentencing should occur.
I don’t see a just outcome to this case when it eventually is resolved. I certainly don’t see any real prison time for Qureshi on the horizon, of the sort a non-Muslim would get for a similar or even an offence of lesser gravity where the victim is a Muslim. I suspect that Mo-Hammered will do a year maybe a bit more in a semi secure mental health unit, either for genuine mental illness or maybe at a later date something more feigned and tactical, go back to the court by which so much time will have elapsed between the attacks and the final sentencing, that this attacker might walk. It’s quite possible that the issue of time elapsed and the ministrations of the various do gooders in the justice system will conclude with at best Mo-Hammered getting a permanent or open ended hospital order, which will at least keep him off of the streets for a while, or at worst some form of suspended sentence or ‘community punishment’ of dubious effectiveness. In any event I foresee a situation where a Muslim man who was sane enough to decide to travel hundreds of miles in order to physically attack Jews and whose mental conditions, if the are genuine, might have been exacerbated by contact with religious radicals, will end up getting a sentence far more lenient than it would be had he been a non-Muslim attacking members of another communal group.
I don’t think any prescience is needed here in what you say about Mo-hammered’s future trajectory.
It’s a standard trope and meme that any Islamic terrorist is “mentally ill” and thus a ‘victim’ (probably of ‘systemic racism’ and ‘Islamophobia’) even though he attacks entirely innocent people.
I will not waste time rehearsing how Islam and its apologists always exonerate Islam from the actions of Muslims claiming their actions are “for Allah [and/or] Mohammed”. Neither will I bother more than this in pointing out the amazingly high correlation between being a practitioner of orthodox Islam and mental illness – and of course setting out to injure or kill innocents is not the action of the truly sane anyway, so there is a grain of truth here.
I will add that yet again we see the wilful blindness to the inherent nature of Islam, especially its orthodox strands as was shown in the reactions to the “Batley Teacher” and (more recently) the “Korangate” incident and the total unwillingness of the authorities to admit the incompatibility of orthodox Islam with any civil society.
It could be said that you don’t have to be mad to follow orthodox Islam, but it surely helps. One thing tht got me about the Mo-Hammered case is that nobody in any position of authority in the entire case seems to have considered whether he is mad as in having a chemical imbalance in the mind or mad because of Islam. One of the interesting things about the Mo-Hammered case is that his family are horrified at his behaviour and his actions. If there is a radicalisation aspect to this and one not mentioned by those in the CJ system and his family has not radicalised him, which seems to be the case as his dad is particularly upset at his son attacking Jews, then who has? His mosque? Islamic street preachers? or is he a ‘distance learning’ radical?
All anyone has to do is carefully read the Koran and believe what is says and then you will be a “radical” i.e. orthodox Muslim.
I often suspect that those that “self-radicalise” have actually done just that – maybe reading in conjunction with a Tafseer.
With respect to his family: how sure can we be that this is genuine and not Taqqiya?
I recall, and I’m sure you do too, how after S.Begum et al joined ISIL their several parent said how “horrified” they were, how the authorities were at fault for not stopping them etc. And then video emerged of one family (Dad and darling now-missing daughter) attending a pro-ISIL meeting along with the delightful “Andy” Chaudhury (at least he’s an honest Islamist).
So sadly (because I realise I may be tarrying people unfairly), I always wonder whether, when Muslims express such ‘horror’, we are actually just being subjected to Taqqiya.
The difference between the family in the Begum case and the Mo-Hammered one is that it relatively soon emerged that Begum’s family were not exactly unfamiliar with Islamic radicalism, whereas nothing to my knowledge has come out in a similar vein about Qureshi’s family. Yes there are good grounds for wondering whether some Muslims, especially those who are self appointed ‘community leaders’ are telling us the truth in some situations but I’d give Qureshi’s dad the benefit of the doubt, there was something about the dads disgust that rang true. If there is a radicalisation element here which the CPS / Media and others are not considering then it could have been from some other source.
As regarding self radicalisation I do wonder whether radicalisation comes from reading texts without having a critical mind when doing so. In the modern world many Christians and Jews are used to interrogating scripture to either see how or if particular passages can be applied today, how it applied when it was written, the context of passages in the political and social world in which they were written along with any underlying or alternative meanings of passages etc etc. If you read the Tanakh and or the Christian Testament without critical thinking or without questions I wonder if there would be a greater or lesser chance of the reader becoming more fundamentalist in a similar way to how some Muslims become fundaentalist? Also Islamic scholarship has not had the 19th century revolution in textual analysis that the Tanakh and the Christian Testament has been subjected to.