Censorship -

A British pastor has been arrested for criticizing Islam and gender ideology, his latest encounter with law enforcement amid concerns about the state of free speech in the United Kingdom.

By Ryan Foley for the Christian Post

The conservative nonprofit legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom International announced in a statement Monday that Pastor Dia Moodley was arrested by Avon and Somerset Police for criticizing Islam and transgender ideology while preaching in Bristol city centre on Nov. 22.

Moodley was arrested on suspicion of violating a provision of the Public Order Act 1986, which bans “inciting religious hatred.”

ADF International clarified that the arrest stemmed from Moodley’s remarks, insisting that there is a “gender binary” and his discussion of Christianity and other religions, including Islam.

While Moodley engaged in respectful dialogue with several people gathered in Bristol city centre, one couple objected to his comments about trans-identified people and called the police. After taking statements from those who objected to Moodley’s speech, police arrested the pastor for “inciting religious hatred” and committing a “religiously aggravated” offense.

Video footage of the arrest shows Moodley urging police officers to place the handcuffs on the front of his body since he has a heart condition. A supporter of Moodley, who was not visible on camera, told the officers, “You’re making a big mistake,” and “You’re not checking eyewitnesses,” and accused them of bias by “taking one eyewitness over another.” The officers defended their actions, asking, “We’re duty bound, aren’t we?”

Moodley spent eight hours in custody and was released with bail conditions prohibiting him from entering Bristol city centre throughout the Christmas season. Although the charges were later dropped, law enforcement officials visited Moodley’s home in January to question him about the November incident and invite him to participate in a voluntary interview. Moodley is still unsure whether he will face criminal charges for his speech.

“This latest arrest has had a profoundly negative effect on me and has been extremely challenging personally,” Moodley said. “I am a law-abiding citizen and it feels surreal that the police have criminalized me so harshly and repeatedly merely for peacefully expressing my Christian views in the public square.”

“The police view me, a Christian pastor, as an easy target and are afraid of others being offended by my lawful speech,” Moodley added. “This is two-tier policing in action.”

Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF International, cited Moodley’s arrest as evidence that “police are using public order legislation to impose de facto blasphemy laws in the UK.” Igunnubole said Moodley’s case “is far from an isolated incident” and “part of a clear pattern” by local police of targeting the pastor for his “peaceful expression in the public square.”

“[Police] have failed in their duty to investigate serious crimes committed against him, by those who objected to his speech,” the lawyer stressed.

“The police must stop their two-tier approach of criminalizing lawful speech. There has long been a pressing need for Parliament to pass legislation to ensure the right to freedom of expression is robustly protected in this country,” Igunnubole added. “Pastor Dia’s case is all the more pressing as the government finalizes its broad and ambiguous definition of ‘anti-Muslim hatred,’ which risks censoring legitimate speech related to Islam.”

The attorney explained that the pastor’s case is an example of how authorities “can misconstrue peaceful comments on Islam as ‘hateful’ and criminal.”

“This misconstruction will be repeated unless clarity is provided to preserve the ability of citizens to peacefully comment, discuss and criticize in accordance with their core beliefs,” Ingunnubole stated.

Moodley was previously arrested in March 2024 for making similar comments about Islam and the binary nature of sex. In addition to spending 13 hours in custody, Moodley had signs stolen from him by students at the nearby Bristol University.

When he preached in Bristol on another occasion, Moodley encountered hostile protesters, including a Muslim bystander who threatened to stab him and a group of Muslim bystanders who pinned him to the ground and attempted to steal his Quran. Moodley held the Quran as he preached in Bristol in an attempt to highlight the differences between Christianity and Islam.

When law enforcement arrived at the scene, they did little to subdue the hostile protesters, one of whom continued to threaten him. While a senior inspector later arrived at the scene and assured Moodley he would not be arrested, the pastor filed a complaint against the police.

This article first appeared at the Christian Post and is republished here with permission.

By Ryan Foley. Ryan Foley joined The Christian Post in August 2020. He currently covers abortion, politics, education and U.S. news. He was a participant in the National Journalism Center’s spring 2018 internship program and has previously written for the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters blog and The Western Journal.

ChristianPost.com is the America’s most comprehensive Christian news website and was launched in March 2004 with the vision of delivering up-to-date news, information, and commentaries relevant to Christians across denominational lines. It presents national and international coverage of current events affecting and involving Christian leaders, church bodies, ministries, mission agencies, schools, businesses, and the general Christian public.

Digital platforms should be held accountable for allowing misinformation on abortion. These agencies working in tandem say pro-life speech is tantamount to “misinformation” and should be stopped.

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. at C-Fam

The UN’s human reproduction program (HRP), housed in the World Health Organization (WHO), recently published the first of a series of papers examining the impact of abortion “misinformation” as it relates to human rights. Their analysis requires their own idiosyncratic understanding of both misinformation and human rights.

For instance, they accept without caveat that abortion access is a right as part of “sexual and reproductive health and rights”, a term never defined or adopted in any international negotiated outcome.

The paper also cites independent experts and committees as sources of human rights standards. Such experts and committees offer recommendations and opinions on human rights treaties, though they have no authority to create new human rights apart from the plain language of the various human rights treaties.

At the same time, the article makes no mention of the consensus position of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) that the legal status of abortion is solely for individual governments to determine.

The authors define misinformation as “false, inaccurate, or misleading information shared without intent to deceive,” while disinformation is spread with knowledge and intent to deceive, and “a particularly harmful form of misinformation, with the potential to deliberately erode human rights protections and restrict access to evidence-based care.”

As an example, the authors cite an article claiming that “inaccurate beliefs about fetal pain were linked with antiabortion views, shaping attitudes toward access and policy.” However, the article they cite bases its view of when unborn children can first feel pain on a “current medical consensus” that simply does not exist, while labeling survey participants who support abortion restrictions based on fetal pain as “anti-choice,” a clearly partisan—and derogatory—label.

The article also expressly calls out the U.S.-based Project 2025 project for containing “strategies to embed misinformation into federal governance by altering agency mandates and rewording policies to stigmatize and delegitimize [sexual and reproductive health.]” Here, the citation is to an article in the feminist and pro-abortion Ms. Magazine.

Another example of misinformation offered by the HRP article is the fact that a Canadian Catholic hospital blocked access to the websites of abortion clinics. The article is broadly critical of traditional cultural and religious views; it expresses alarm that a “a rising anti-rights movement in Ethiopia, aligned with the US Christian Right, is working to dismantle the right to safe and legal abortion.” It takes for granted that the nonbinding opinions of UN human rights experts take precedence over religious beliefs. “Human rights standards related to equality and nondiscrimination are routinely impacted” by misinformation, they write, “particularly when gender stereotypes, religious ideologies, or cultural beliefs are used to delegitimize SRHR.” In other words, anything that casts abortion in a negative light is misinformation.

The article does offer some examples of what would commonly be understood as misinformation and disinformation, such as scammers purveying “miracle drugs” and clearly unqualified people offering spurious medical advice on TikTok. However, the HRP authors’ credibility is undermined by their own ideological biases and overreliance on citing others who share them. Ultimately, whatever policy and legal solutions they recommend will have the effect of stifling pro-life voices and censoring conservative viewpoints if they are implemented.

By Rebecca Oas. C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

Tag: Censorship

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