War On Lyrical Terrorism

Does this mean we’re winning?

A 23-year-old former Heathrow shop assistant who called herself the “lyrical terrorist” and scrawled her extremist thoughts on till receipts has been handed a nine-month suspended jail sentence.

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A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain welcomed the decision by the judge to suspend the sentence. Inayat Bunglawala said: “It always seemed a rather bizarre decision to prosecute Samina when she is clearly not an actual terror plotter.

“Samina Malik was being prosecuted in effect for a thought crime because she had downloaded some material from the internet which anyone could download.” Mr Bunglawala said the case demonstrated how ill-conceived and “incredibly broad-ranging” the law is under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act. “Teenagers download some quite nihilistic material every day and they are not prosecuted,” he said.

In a statement, the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Samina Malik was not prosecuted for writing poetry. Ms Malik was convicted of collecting information, without reasonable excuse, of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”

H/t RickB, who wonders what would constitute a reasonable excuse – especially “knowing that could be the difference between freedom and house arrest now”. Submit your extremist poetry and fundamentalist limericks in the comment box, and make sure your excuse is nice and reasonable.