{"id":93544,"date":"2012-03-13T15:11:24","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T15:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=8047"},"modified":"2012-03-13T15:11:24","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T15:11:24","slug":"facebook-offence-azhar-ahmed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=93544","title":{"rendered":"How can insulting soldiers be "racially aggravated"?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yorkshire 19-year-old Azhar Ahmed is facing charges<\/a> of \u201cracially aggravated public order offences\u201d after he posted an angry Facebook status update about the reporting of the latest British Army fatalities in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Ahmed\u2019s sentiment (see pic) was not unsual. He starts off with the widely repeated complaint that deaths of British soldiers are given blanket coverage, while deaths of Afghans barely merit a mention. This is true, and hardly controversial.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ahmed\u2019s mistake, apparently, is to continue to vent his anger, and suggests that British soldiers should all die and go to hell. Strong language, but does it tip into incitement to violence? I think not. Nor, for that matter, do West Yorkshire police, who have not pursued Ahmed on this charge. Rather, they have sinisterly construed Ahmed\u2019s comment as \u201cracially aggravated\u201d.<\/p>\n

Serving British army soldiers do not count as an ethnicity. So why angry words about them could be seen as racially aggravated is a mystery. But perhaps unwittingly, those responsible for this charge have revealed something dark about the way the war in Afghanistan is now viewed.<\/p>\n

Unconditional support for soldiers is now expected, even as we become increasingly unsure of what they\u2019re doing out there. From the most ardent supporter of the war to the most strident critic, everyone claims to be acting in the interest of Our Brave Boys<\/a>. This is now not a matter of politics, but loyalty. This question is compounded in Ahmed\u2019s case, as the six soldiers killed were all from the local Yorkshire Regiment. Ahmed\u2019s home town Dewsbury was also home of Britain\u2019s best-known suicide bomber, Mohammad Sidique Khan, in the months before his attack on London. Suspicion of young Muslims voicing anti-troops opinions in the area is predictable.<\/p>\n

But still the \u201cracially aggravated\u201d charge doesn\u2019t stick, unless one is willing to buy into the notion that Afghanistan is part of an ethno-religious war between \u201cIslam\u201d and \u201cthe West\u201d. This is the line that the likes of Anjem Choudary have been pushing for years. And now it seems West Yorkshire police agree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Padraig Reidy<\/strong>: How can insulting soldiers be “racially aggravated”?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,704,4427,136,443],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93544"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}