A new video shows the moment a Christian preacher was pushed by a masked man and had his equipment attacked in Whitechapel before a police officer stepped in to defend his freedom of speech.
The evangelist is seen in the footage being surrounded as he tries to speak through a microphone on Whitechapel Road in east London on February 16, a day before Ramadan began.
Part of his equipment is kicked by a man wearing grey tracksuit bottoms and a puffer coat, before another manically shouts in his face, ‘where you come from?’
As the preacher replies ‘London’, the second man continues to scream and make gestures with his hands, before a third person wearing a mask approaches the Christian from behind and pushes him with force.
A female police officer was forced to step in and defend the preacher’s freedom of speech after the group of males surrounded her to complain the evangelist was ‘in a Muslim area’.
Speaking after the incident, a local Muslim in the area today told TalkTV that people who say ‘bad things’ about those who follow Islam should be punished.
‘Muslim people live around this area,’ he said, adding: ‘If [people] are saying bad things [about Muslims], the police knows how it goes. They will take it seriously. Maybe he is arrested, maybe they will give him a chance to not say that thing.’
In separate footage, as the Christian preacher tries to speak, a Muslim man wearing sunglasses and a tracksuit repeatedly bellows ‘we don’t want to worship a Jewish man’.
He then quips, ‘we don’t believe in a Jew’ amid the chaotic encounter which was captured by YouTuber Auditing Britain.
‘Why do you come here and want us to worship a Jewish man? I don’t understand. Listen, we don’t want to worship a Jewish man,’ the man says to the preacher.
‘You come here and want to tell us to worship a Jewish man. Yeah, go and worship your Jewish man.
‘You believe in a mystical dying God. A man God. We don’t believe in a Jew.’
The Christian argues he has come to the area to ‘preach true salvation’. He continues to speak through a microphone, where he quotes extracts from the Koran and questions Islam.
In response, the Muslim man repeatedly shouts: ‘Your god is a Jew. We have some slaves of Jews here.’
After the incident, Nigel Farage added to the growing voices in support of the female officer who was widely praised for how she handled the row.
Speaking on Jeremy Kyle’s Breakfast Show on Talk, the Reform UK leader said: ‘She deserves to be honoured. I watched that video. She was calm, she was logical. Goodness me, what a credit she was to the Metropolitan Police.
‘What a credit she was to herself, and what a credit she was to plain common sense and what we like to think of as a free country. She did absolutely brilliantly. I wish more were like her.’
The confrontation saw the officer being surrounded by males and telling them: ‘In this country, we have freedom of speech.’
She continued: ‘I understand that you guys don’t want to hear it, so I would just recommend that you walk away and don’t listen to him. He’s not in your home.’
The Daily Mail has contacted the Met Police for comment today.
