In a rather shocking and rare win for Christianity in Britain, a street evangelist named Hatun Tash has won a settlement against British police for wrongful arrest after she spoke the basic Christian belief that Jesus Christ is the only way to God and that Islam is a heretical false teaching that leads to hell.
Britain's Metropolitan Police apologized and paid £10,000 ($11,286.23 U.S.) to a woman they wrongfully arrested for preaching against Islam in London's famed Speakers' Corner, a settlement labeled "a rare admission" by an attorney who helped her.
Even more interesting was the fact that the street evangelist is a former Turkish Muslim who converted to Christianity and has dedicated her life to defeating Islam and sharing the Gospel in London.
England has seen thousands of people arrested and executed over the centuries for professing their faith publicly, although in the enlightened age of 2022, it seems England has forgotten that long-fought historical lesson.
The fact that she managed to get a "rare" apology from the police department after being arrested for wrongthink shows you where the once-great nation is at:
Hatun Tash, 40, a former Muslim turned Christian who says she now believes Islam is a false religion, moved to the United Kingdom from Turkey nine years ago, and has since been arrested twice.
She was also stabbed on the street in 2021 by an unknown assailant.
Tash has been through a lot of persecution, both by people attacking her in the street and her government, and she fights and endures it all to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Ms. Tash, who operates Defend Christ Critique Islam (DCCI) Ministries, said she donated the settlement to the Christian Legal Centre, which represented her in seeking redress from the police headquarters, known colloquially as Scotland Yard.
CLC Chief Executive Andrea Williams said: "This payout to Hatun is a rare admission by the police that they got it wrong."
She said Ms. Tash "has been repeatedly silenced or removed by the police because she challenges the religious ideology of Islam. … If Hatun is silenced by violence at Speakers' Corner, we are all silenced."
Police Inspector Andy O'Donnell of the Civil Actions Investigations Unit in the agency's professional standards directorate sent an apology to Ms. Tash for arrests in December 2020 and May 2021.
She goes to a place called Speakers' Corner, which is a public square meant for the specific purpose of speaking freely, but because she speaks against Islam she is regularly hounded and harassed by the cops.
The first arrest involved a dispute with police over coronavirus regulations. The second came when she was "assaulted, abused and harassed by a group of Islamic men for wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Muhammad on it while taking part in weekly debates at Speakers' Corner, known as the home of free speech," the CLC said in a news release.
According to the release, police told Ms. Tash to leave the park instead of dealing with her harassers before then arresting her for "breaching the peace." She was held for 24 hours "before being released with the police taking no further action," the group said.
If she says something to offend Muslims, or wears a T-shirt, SHE is the one arrested for "breaching the peace," not the violent men who attacked and harassed her.
"I have considered the background to your claim and am satisfied that on these occasions the level of service did fall below the requisite standard, Mr. O'Donnell wrote in a letter made public on Friday. He added, "I would like to take this opportunity to [apologize] to you for the distress that you have suffered as a consequence of these incidents."
Thank goodness some common sense and decency remains in Britain. Someone in the department recognized that Christianity was being unfairly targeted and backed down.
Only after the pressure of lawsuits, of course.
Ms. Tash said the settlement and apology must be "just the beginning" of protecting the freedom of Christians who speak in Hyde Park.
"The police have repeatedly taken away my rights and told me that they cannot protect me because they do not want to offend a certain group of people, which has been very disturbing," she said in a statement. "We don't live in Pakistan; we don't live in Saudi Arabia. I am Christian and by default I believe that Muhammad is a false prophet. I should be allowed to say that in the U.K. without being stabbed or repeatedly arrested," she added.
Tash and her organization stand in the footsteps of those who went before her, from John Wycliffe to William Tyndale to Nicholas Ridley to John Bunyan.
God bless her.
Now if only England would remember the great men and women that once made her what she was before it is too late, and the nation learns what "tolerance" in Marxism and Islam actually looks like.
