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Holy demagoguery, Batman! She is not being punished for writing poetry: section 58 of the Terrorism Act has nothing to do with poetry. The fact that she'd written poetry expressing a desire for martyrdom and praising the beheading of westerners was used as evidence in her conviction, it was not the crime itself.
She was sentenced for possessing materials likely to be useful to someone committing or preparing for a terrorist act - amongst other things, a poisoning handbook and manuals for sniper rifles.
Of course, at the moment we have no idea what her punishment will be, but along with most people in Britain I don't much problem with her being found guilty here.
"for possessing materials likely to be useful to someone committing or preparing for a terrorist act". Doesn't that cover most farmers? I mean they generally have a gun, ammonium nitrate, and fuel oil.
Indeed, arse_hat. Samina, though, is Muslim, hijab wearing, not white, and not an educated professional with a state-sanctioned reason to write and read such things. (State sanctioned reasons include being a journalist or scholar, I suppose. Being an artist doesn't work, nor does being emo, naive and Islamic, as Samina seems to be.
Terrorists find food useful, as do the rest of us. Does that mean we are all going to be sent to jail for eating? No, obviously not. Evidently the law, and the judges who implement it, is a little more sophisticated than that.
The law itself under which she was convicted may be too broad in scope, however, Muslims will not get any special sympathy when from me simply by virtue of being muslims. Your post seems to indicate that this poor innocent kid was unfairly targeted, and I think that you bent the facts a bit to support your agenda.
Maybe I have a different understandin of 'emo' than most of you? Ive seen myspace and livejournal emo blogs with lots of drama, self-harm and harm-of-others threats.. is this generally not common?
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