Guess the religion of assaulter
(WHTM) It almost sounds like the makings of a joke: an atheist, a Muslim and the Mechanicsburg Halloween parade. But non-believers aren’t laughing about an attack and insist what’s really frightening is the way a district judge ruled on it.
The Atheists of Central Pennsylvania decided to walk in the Mechanicsburg Halloween parade. There was a zombie Pope and a zombie Muhammed. On YouTube, you can catch a scary moment. It’s dark and distorted, but a Muslim man comes off the curb extremely offended at Muhammed being depicted in this way.
“He grabbed me, choked me from the back, and spun me around to try to get my sign off that was wrapped around my neck,” said Ernie Perce, who donned the costume.
Both men called the police: one because he had been assaulted, the other because he thought it was against the law to profane Muhammed.
Talaag Elbayomy was charged with harassment, but District Judge Mark Martin threw it out after criticizing Perce, the victim, and even calling him a “doofus.” The audio is also on YouTube. Martin, who has done several tours of duty in the Middle East, said Perce would be put to death in those societies for his crime, but Perce wonders why that’s relevant in this country.
“He let a man who is Muslim, because of his preference of his culture and his way of life, walk free from an attack,” Perce said.
How to respond? Is this a case of a growing use of Sharia law in our courts? Is this a case of a Dhimmi on the bench? Who knows? What we do know is that Judge Martin blatantly dismissed assault charges for an absurd reason. I wonder how he would have ruled had the attacker been a Christian on zombie-Pope?
Friday update: apparently, Judge Martin stated in court that he was offended by zombie Muhammad because he’s a Muslim. Ace has the 411.
Looks like this getting a bit more coverage now in the blogosphere : story up at National Review, and plenty of links at Memeorandum, including The Jawa Report, Verum Serum, and Sister Toldjah.
I am not defending the Muslim here, but this seems to be a stretch by the atheist.
Here is the video of the incident on YouTube.
The alleged victim’s voice never changes or shows a strain while he claims he is being choked.
He does get upset and yells for someone, but then 5 seconds later he is calmly walking down the street doing what he did before the attack.
If you were assaulted, is that how you would react? Not me.
There is no reaction of help from the crowd or anything.
While the man who came off of the sidewalk and onto the street was wrong, being wrong may not rise to the level of a crime.
In my opinion, we have a perfect storm. We have a Muslim who takes offense at free speech and an atheist who is deliberately trying to be offensive and create a confrontation. The Muslim wants the depiction stopped and the atheist wants an example of the “intolerance of theists.”
Given what I have read and seen, I agree with the judge but go even further…… BOTH men are doofuses.
You make some good points. That said, the judge did over-react.
Fortunately is not criminal to be a doofus, yet it is still a crime to attack people, no matter how strong or soft it was.
Obfuscation doesn’t change the law. Yet, encroaching Sharia seems to.
I agree.
Where’s the attack?
The alleged victim says he was attacked bit does the video support that claim? It doesn’t appear to me to support it.
The alleged perpetrator said he never touched the alleged victim.
If you take religion out of this, you just have a situation where one guy claims one thing and another guy claims another. It doesn’t appear the evidence proves the case.
(And yes, the judge did go over the line, but I agree with his assessment of people that go looking to antagonize and those who oblige them. But I am not sitting on a bench and it should not have been said from the bench. :) I guess that means the judge is a doofus as well.)
Ace has more news…
The judge was a muslim and he took offense therefore the “victim” is guilty.
Again, reason we say Sharia is incompatible with our constitutional foundation, especially if it is incompatible with our First Amendment – lo, our natural right to free speech. And our right to be free of harassment.
We do not have the right to NOT be offended.
Okay, please try an unwanted touching of a police officer and see what happens to you. You’re going to face assault charges because it’s a battery.
No, the man was not guilty because he was not guilty. The “victim” was not a charged with anything so he cannot be guilty of anything.
Agreed. Luckily this case was not decided on whether someone was offended.
You’re going to face assault charges because it’s a battery.
Let’s start here. It doesn’t matter what happens in other cases. What matters is what happened in this case. In this case the man was not charged with assault. All the people that are upset that a Muslim judge let off a Muslim man for assault don’t know, realize or care that the guy was not charged with assault. He was only charged with “harassment.”
The lack of an assault charge is not the fault of the judge. It is the fault of the police and the prosecutor. Don’t blame the judge for not ruling on something that isn’t in front of him.
Now let’s look at the charge of harassment. According to Pennsylvania law:
The key phrase is “with the intent….”
The judge makes the point that the guy was used to the law of another country. He thought the laws were the same here. Because of that, there was no intent. You can even see in the man’s actions that intent was lacking because after the initial contact with the “zombie” he walks three blocks with the zombie and reports him to the police.
The judge, by law, could not say the man was guilty because there was no intent.
The last part is that the judge allegedly called the atheist a “doofus.” He did not.
Listen to the tape. What the judge says is that there are people that go out with the intent of offending people and while that is within his rights, he “ends up looking a little like a doofus.”
The judge is right. The guy has the First Amendment right to antagonize and be offensive, but in doing so people like him look ridiculous.
The same idiocy is true of the Westboro Baptist Church people. They exist only to offend others. That is their right and it should be protected. But their right to offend does not take away the rights of the rest of the people to call them names or say they are morons.
gitarcarver,
once again you are wrong and are trying to dilute the truth.
The judge, took offense to the “victim” mocking muhammed as a zombie. He then defended the muslim belief system. He defended the right of muslims to get angry after being offended. He defended the “attacker”s right to act on that anger.
And to say the “attacker” had no intent in ludicrous on its face. Having no intent would be if the “attacker” came up and touched his shoulder to ask for directions. He so felt that his belief system was under attack that he got up or walked away from the curb to grab and verbally harass a participant in a parade. A parade during which a pope was also depicted as a zombie but no Christian became upset. The “attacker”, acting upon his need for redress of his grievance attacked the “victim” by grabbing him and diverting his course. The “attacker” then tried to remove the “victim’s” sign.
Please show me where there is NO INTENT here? The “attacker” even called police because he felt so aggrieved that he needed police intervention to stop the “victim”.
And the judge defended all of this. And now, more muslims will believe they have the right to act upon their anger.
And btw, as to the doofus argument. Yours may be a legal word parcing, but if someone to exclaim to another, “You’re running around like a crazy person”. Do you think that “no, he did not just call the other a crazy person because he was acting like a crazy person.. he only said he had the appearance of one who was crazy”???
The phrase means….. “stop behaving in a way that someone could look upon you and think you are in fact a crazy person”. And, when the words, in this case calling the “victim” a doofus, carry the force of a sitting judge giving out his ruling, then it carries more weight and the justice system behind it.
Hmmm.. .let’s see. A woman is grabbed from behind, turned around and yelled at. She fears for her safety. She does appear to be wearing an outlandish outfit and walking out in public. When the case goes to court, the judge told her she was acting like a doofus.
How does that play out? Do you think the media would give the judge a pass on that as well? Or would NOW and ACLU and other various women’s rights groups be all up in arms?
To claim that an attacker can now act based solely upon how he feels when his religious beliefs are made fun of, then welcome to Sharia Law.
And for you to even discount it to the point of defending and playing down what the “attacker” did shows you are blind to the dangers of Sharia.
Gumball,
As the old saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own set of facts.
You have claimed the judge is a Muslim. He is not.
You claim the judge defends Sharia law. He does not. He is setting the basis for his ruling in that Talag Elbayomy who is not from this country and had spent most of his life in countries with a different justice system, did not have the intent required under the law to commit the crime he was accused of. Furthermore, it appears the Commonwealth never addressed the issue of “intent.” Without that element, the judge had no choice but to let the guy go.
“Intent” under the law cannot be based on actions alone. That is the law. For example, if a person shoots and kills someone, whether they are charged with first degree murder, second degree murder or manslaughter depends on intent.
As to the “doofus” argument, the original article claims the judge called Ernest Perce “a doofus.” You can try and spin this all you want, but the judge never says “you are a doofus.”
There are many people trying to make this about Sharia law. It is not. I, like the judge, am tired of people running around deliberately trying to offend people. I recognize and support their right to be offensive, but I also recognize the rights of others to say, “that is wrong.” That right extends to the judge as well.
The fact of the matter is that the Commonwealth never proved intent and because of that, the case was dismissed.