Brian Conrad Neil, 56, has been arrested and refused bail on charges of incitement to hatred for placing a replica mosque on a bonfire during Northern Ireland’s centuries-old tradition.
The model mosque, displayed at a bonfire in Moygashel, County Tyrone, bore the words: “Secure our borders. End the threat of radical Islam.” Ezra Levant noted that the Arabic lettering referenced fascism as a deliberate attempt to distinguish radical Islam from the broader religion.
Neil appeared before Dungannon Magistrates’ Court in handcuffs and has been charged with incitement to hatred. District Judge Barney McElholm declared that those who placed the replica mosque “had an agenda full of hate and bigotry towards others.”
The refusal of bail, which Ezra Levant described as particularly striking in Ireland, was based on flight risk and ongoing danger to the community — conditions not applicable to a man who built a parade float. Levant highlighted a double standard: last month, a Sudanese migrant in Northern Ireland attempted to behead a man and was not denied bail, yet Neil remains incarcerated.
“No one is immune from the mockery on these bonfires,” Levant said, “except Islam. And a man sits in jail for a month because of it.”
He drew a parallel with Canada, where the Lord’s Prayer was purged from Saskatchewan schools as offensive to non-believers while Muslim call-to-prayer broadcasts are now amplified in downtown Regina. Residents of Regina have demanded that Mayor Chad Bachynski and the city council revoke the temporary permit allowing the downtown Jamia Masjid to broadcast the amplified Islamic call to prayer, which disrupts the city core with noise audible over one kilometer every Friday.
Police in Regina have responded by increasing patrols around Muslim sites and warned that threats related to the controversy will be investigated under enhanced hate crime provisions of Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act — even as they approved the broadcasts.
