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Three men sentenced for firebombing U.K. publisher

From CBC.ca:

A judge in Britain has sentenced three Muslim men to 4½ years in prison each for an arson attack on the home of a publisher of a novel about the child bride of the Prophet Muhammad.

Ali Beheshti, Abrar Mirza and Abbas Taj were convicted of conspiracy to commit arson at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Tuesday in the firebombing of the home of Martin Rynja on Sept. 27 last year.

The trio spilled diesel on the front door or Rynja’s house in the Islington area of north London and set it on fire, just days before Rynja’s Gibson Square company was scheduled to publish The Jewel of the Medina by Sherry Jones.

One of the firebombers, whose lawyer argued at sentencing that his actions were justified, now “considers his conduct to have been misguided, disproportionate and counter-productive.” Ya think?

(We should note that both this post and the previous involve the intersection of politics, religion, books, and fire. What can we say? It’s hump day.)

By

July 8th, 2009

1:09 pm

Category: Book news

Tagged with: censorship, religion