Brittisk pastor gripen två gånger för uttalanden under gatupredikningar | NTD NYHETER

And a look now at a case that touches on free speech and freedom of religion. It comes amid concerns that preachers in the UK are under immense pressure and face arrests for their Christian faith. NTD's Daniel Monaghan spoke with a Christian pastor who was recently arrested in Bristol's city centre. Pastor Dia Moodley was arrested by Avon and Somerset police officers last November in Broadmead on suspicion of inciting religious hatred. I'm not a politician, I'm not an activist, I'm a pastor and I just want to be left alone in the United Kingdom to do what is lawfully allowed for us to do, peaceably lawfully allowed to do, which is preaching of the Bible, prayer in the public square, reading of the scriptures in the public square and the proclamation of the gospel in the public square. Moodley has now been arrested twice for just that. This time around, he says, for a comparison between religions. One of the methodologies we use is we engage in a Q&A where we'll take questions from the public. And so people asked about our view of Islam and we made it very clear factually what we believe Islam to be compared to Christianity. They took offence to that and when the police arrived, they made their complaint and the police then proceeded to arrest me without asking any questions. The second part of the arrest related to the topic of gender. So I held up a book and the Bible and this book says there's a baby in my daddy's belly and the other book is the Bible. So I asked the audience, which one is true concerning our gender? Are there multiple genders? Can men have babies? Or is the Bible true that there are only two genders? I contacted the Avon and Somerset police who confirmed that a man was arrested in November of last year on suspicion of what they called a racially or religiously aggravated public order offence. He was also banned from entering the Bristol city centre until the end of December, which stopped him from preaching over the busy Christmas period. Moodley was arrested under the Public Order Act of 1986. The legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom says the act has very vague and broad terms like causing alarm and distress through your words or inciting hatred around religion or race. Because they're not precisely and very tightly defined, the authorities are using them with very broad discretion to crack down on totally lawful and peaceful expression. The legal firm says Moodley was assaulted in March of last year by what it described as Muslim bystanders who disagreed with his views. It says one man even threatened to stab him. The legal firm says police arrived at the scene and threatened to arrest the pastor and took no action against those it says assaulted him. We think this is censorship plain and simple. And we think it also goes to this concept of two-tier policing, which we think is really prevalent in the UK, where the police are prioritizing certain worldviews over others. What we've seen from his experience is that the police are prioritizing Islam and a progressive worldview over the views of a Christian. Prior to the March incident, Moodley met with the US State Department, who sent a delegation to address censorship in the UK. You know, Keir Starmer says that we have a long history of freedom of speech. And we said on the ground level, We know as Christians, our freedom of speech is being threatened. That no matter what we say and how carefully we even say it, going to great lengths to make sure that we don't get arrested. Yet we're still getting arrested. Moodley says his case is in a state of limbo right now. He hopes police will have to answer for his arrest. They've not only arrested me now the second time, they've destroyed my preaching signs which have scriptures on them. They took the liberty to trample them on the foot, to destroy them, to put them in the bin. The pastor says the public should be very concerned about the threat to free speech in the UK. This is the absolute reality. We're seeing it at grassroots level, on street level, that our freedom to speak freely as Christians is under threat. And we needed all the help we could get. Alliance Defending Freedom International is calling on the British Parliament to and to stop what it describes as two-tier policing. Daniel Monaghan, NTD News.