Freedom of religion takes another hit in the UK

ICYMI:

UK police charged a man with a crime & of silently praying. Adam Smith-Connor was standing quietly on a public green across the street from an abortion facility. He was 50 – 75 meters away, stood by a tree to be out of its line of sight, and even had his back turned to the clinic, to avoid any impression of approaching or engaging with women using the facility.

Police: We just wanted to come over and say hello, but also just to inquire as to your activities for today.

Adam: Well, I m praying. He had been there for 3 minutes.

Police: In terms of that, can I ask what is the nature of your prayer today? Adam: I m praying for my son, who is deceased.

Police: I m sorry for your loss, but ultimately I have to go along with the guidelines of the Public Space Protection Order, to say that we are in the belief that you are in breach of the clause 4A, which says about prayer and also acts of disapproval around the activities at the clinic.

Adam: I m just standing praying.

For his silent prayer, Adam has been through two years of legal proceedings and just finished three days of trial. If he is found guilty, he will have a criminal record. Local authorities have spent over £90k of taxpayer money prosecuting him.

The UK has truly become a dystopia.

12:25 PM · Sep 20, 2024 · 834.7K Views 

https://x.com/BillboardChris/status/1837211388659257839

It’s easy to see how police powers could be expanded just by making bigger the public spaces in which praying would not be allowed. Like, e.g., all of them. True, it would be easy enough for one to deny that one was praying, at least until AI makes it possible, as I’m sure it all ready is, for an AI to recognize the little tells one makes when one is praying silently. Moving one’s lips, nodding one’s head, a far away look in the eyes, or whatever. 

Perhaps this tech could be defeated with a simple veil. In a Robert Heinlein novel, Stranger in a Strange Land I think, people walking down the street usually wear veils to obscure their identity from a futuristic technology. Maybe that would have to be made illegal, as it basically is now in France. AI’s could defeat this however by identifying one by one’s gait, as I understand they do in the PRC and undoubtedly here sometimes as well. One could do as Fremen do in Dune to trick the Sandworms I suppose. One would have to learn how to walk like one was not praying. It’s more difficult than you might think to walk and unnoticeably pray at the same time.

All these invasions need to be resisted. Especially by law professors.