UK Watch

Luke Yarwood’s posts were viewed a total of 33 times before being taken down. If I’ve done my math correctly, that’s nearly 17 days of jail time per view. If I know anything about people, half of those views were Yarwood checking his mentions.

There’s no denying the nasty nature of Yarwood’s posts, sent to X before the identity of the killer — 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana — was known, but was widely misreported to have been a Muslim immigrant. Rudakubana was born in Cardiff, but his parents were evangelical immigrants from Rwanda.

Yarwood’s posts called for “slaughter in the streets” of Muslims and encouraged people to “Head for the hotels housing them and burn them to the ground.”

A church leader in the UK says police warned him that he may face a criminal investigation because a Bible verse displayed on the back of his campervan could be treated as “hate speech.”

The story is yet another chilling example of how far Britain’s crackdown on religious expression has gone.

Pastor Mick Fleming, 59, who runs an independent church and anti-poverty charity in Burnley, said he was approached by a police officer at a gas station on October 27.

The officer warned Fleming that the Scripture on his vehicle might be considered hateful “in the wrong context.”

The verse was John 3:16, one of the most widely known and quoted passages in the Christian faith:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”