|TOP|Pastor Danny Nalliah, one of Australia’s leading pastors and president of Catch the Fire Ministries, was sued under a religious hatred law similar to that planned for the UK.

Pastor Nalliah Ministries was speaking at a private seminar in Australia called to consider the impact of Islam when he quoted the Koran to demonstrate what some Muslims believe. As a result, he was found guilty of inciting religious hatred.

He has campaigned vigorously against the UK law and is jubilant at its defeat in the House of Commons.

Christian Today caught up with Pastor Danny during his visit to the UK following the defeat of the Religious Hatred Bill in Parliament at the end of January. The interview can be read in full below:

You were prosecuted in Australia under the Religious Freedom Bill. Can you explain a bit about how that came to be a successful prosecution?

Back on 9th April 2000 I am based in Australia but used to travel across the nations and do large meetings and I was preaching in the nation of Ethiopia. On 9th April the Lord spoke to me in a dream and said there was a law coming in Australia and would maybe take over the world to ban evangelism or more commonly known as free speech. At this point in time I jumped off my bed at five in the morning shouting, ‘No this cant happen Lord’ and the Lord spoke to me when I was awake and said, ‘If my people would be proactive and stop the disaster that is coming, if my people be reactive and pay a heavy price to take back their nation’. Then he spoke to me through 2 Chronicles 7:14, ‘If my people will humble themselves turn away from their wickedness and seek my face then I will hear from heaven.’

|QUOTE|A prayer movement was launched in Australia based in 40 cities. Now, we started a prayer movement in anticipation of a law which was coming to persecute the church without having any understanding or clue from the government aspect as to whether there was a law or not. But praise God we discovered in 2000, December, after we started the prayer movement in August that there was such a law for the first time being introduced in the state of Victoria.

The first state to be launched was Victoria and in January 2002, it was launched in 2000 and then in 2002 became an official law in the state of Victoria. March 2002 we ran our seminar entitled ‘Insight into Islam’. The seminar came about as a result of September 11 and the Christian community wanting an understanding of the true features of Islam. Our seminar was held on 9th March 2002 and the Islamic Council of Victoria, because they have a law under which they could take someone to task, and decided to send three Anglo-Saxon converts to Islam who posed to be Christians and came to the gathering of 250 to 300 Christians in a church.

They took on 52 points as complaints against our seminar and took us to court under the Equal Opportunity Commission and demanded an apology. But we refused to apologise on the grounds that what we said was all from the Koran and how can you be vilifying somebody for reading a sermon on a holy text. On those grounds we rejected the motion and said we will not apologise for speaking the truth and that resulted in us being taken from the Equal Opportunity Commission, the tribunal. Now what was most interesting was that in the tribunal the court case went on for forty days over a period of two years. And in the tribunal when we were accused of making statements A,B and C by the Islamic Council barrister we got up and said, ‘Excuse me your honour, the judge, we did not think to make up what we have been accused of, we have taken it word for word from the Koran’.

And so we started reading verses from the Koran saying this is our defence saying this is not our words but the Prophet’s words in the Koran. At this point the barrister of the Islamic Council shouted out, ‘Stop the man from reading from the Koran because he is about to vilify the Muslims once again’. It sounded so ridiculous. At that moment we had to say, ‘Your honour how can we vilify Muslims when we read from the Koran’. And the barrister at that moment told the judge, ‘Your honour may I put in record, under the new law truth is not a defence’.

The religious law is a very crafty law because it is subjective and not objective. And under the law, truth is not a defence. So according to the law even the judge stated that he basically could not really understand why we should be found guilty - in other words he didn’t spell it out. But he wrote statements to contribute towards that. But he said, ‘However, I have to judge according to the law’ and thus myself and my fellow colleague were both found guilty. We have now appealed the court case in the Supreme Court and the court case is coming up in the month of June for hearing.

|AD|However, may I say this; it was such an excitement for us even though we had to carry this Cross and go through four years with threats on our lives, threats to my family, people on the telephone and on the internet. And we said, ‘Lord I will carry this Cross because we want to see a breakthrough in our nation’. And what has resulted is South Australia, Western Australia, New South Wales, all three states proposed the same law and all three states cited our court case and thus the law was rejected in Parliament. And very much similar to what is happening in Britain.

I was here in July last year, 2005, campaigning in the House of Lords with Christian Lawyers Association, the Christian Lawyers lobby, and we ran a very successful campaign which resulted in the House of Lords amending the law from its original version and as you would know right now when it came back to the House of Commons just over a week or two weeks ago the government wanted it re-amended to its original version which was terrible for the British people.

The House of Lords had amended it to give enough freedom for the Christians to preach freely and for the people to have the ability of free speech. And thank God that the government’s version was defeated by one vote and the House of Lord’s version was approved by one vote. It just so happened that Tony Blair did not vote, he had to go a bit early, and thus it was carried through and the Church had a victory in this law in Britain. I am currently here in Great Britain because I came to stand by the British people and be a mouth saying, ‘Hey, we have seen a victory. Let’s not go to sleep’. I will try to get the ground troops mobilised to pray and start looking out without waiting for a disaster to seek us in order to be reactive, proactive, and avert it before it happens.

Can you tell me a bit about your reaction to the defeat of the proposed version in the UK?

Well my initial reaction was: I jumped up and down, lifted my hands up and said, ‘Thank you Lord. You have given Britain a second chance to preach the Gospel’. I am originally from Sri Lanka; that is my country of birth. My great great grandparents were from a Hindu background. They came to Christ because of the people from Britain who brought the Word of God into Sri Lanka. I now live in a country which is Australia, which is my home, and Australia was founded by people who came out of Great Britain and Judeo-Christian values.

And Great Britain was a country which was radically motivated to preaching the Word of Christ and I just cannot understand what has happened to our nation of Great Britain. It has become so passive in the last 200 years to the point that it is not motivated at all. Political correctness has become such a strong aspect in the Church. People are scared to speak. From the point of a total strong radical Christian country to bring the Gospel to nations around the world it has got so passive that I thank God today that those people from those countries where they preached the Word are coming back at the harvest back into Great Britain.

When I was there in July standing outside the Parliament being a part of the demonstration it was interesting to see 2,000 people gathered demonstrating, but what was most interesting to see was that maybe 1,945 of the people demonstrating were from Africa. And I think the Lord has brought back the seed that Great Britain sowed in the last two centuries as missionaries back into the land to tell the nation God has given us another chance through the Bill being stopped and being given the opportunity to continue to preach. Let’s not miss this opportunity, let’s push it all the way until we see this nation come back to Jesus.

So you see this as a great opportunity for Christians in the UK to really reveal their influence?

After experiencing wrath of the legislation in Australia I can tell you this is just an awesome opportunity. It is one of the best things that has happened to Great Britain, this law not passing according to the government version, not passing according the House of Lords version.

Because in the state of Victoria today if a Christian happens to pray against Satan and there is a Satan worshipper in the congregation he has the law that can sue me and I can be taken to court. Now I may get off the hook ultimately but not without paying 2 or 3,000 Australian Dollars defence trying to get a lawyer to fight my case, which restricted the Church in a great victory, so we have paid a heavy price. But what I am excited about is that price we paid in Victoria has paid off in many other places.

In fact in the House of Lords many of them told me when I met with them in July last year that our court case was debated over and over again. ‘Pastor Dannie, your court case in Victoria was used so many times in our arguments against the coming laws in our country.’ So it’s played a major role and I thank God that we stood our ground and did not apologise. So I would thank the Lord for the freedom that has been given, one more chance for Britain to preach the Gospel.

There is quite a lot of talk in the UK about the decline of Christianity and the decline of the Christian church. Do you think this Bill and the protest against it has really revealed the influence and the power that evangelical Christians still have in British society?

Yes; a united church is the key to victory. There is statement that says ‘united we stand, divided we fall’. Churches have been doing their own little thing within the four walls at the cost of being passive. We have gone to such a place where we have compromised the stand. We got to be loving, we got to be caring but we also got to be bold and gutsy. The word of God says that the Kingdom of God has suffered much violence but the violence shall take it forcefully. And I think its time that the church puts into action now.

When I say that we as Christians don’t take up its weapons we Christians take the Word of God and love, but we also we need to take our stand. It’s like around the walls of Jericho. When the Israelite army marched, they had to march sing and worship, they had to come out and take a stand against the walls and then God said ‘The battle belongs to me, I want my servants to take their stand in the line’ and I think the British people coming out of their comfort zones and taking a stand has been a key to this victory. And I really want to encourage the nation of Britain to continue to work together as the body of Christ, not try to do my own little thing in my own little quarter but rather working as a body to see a nation start a nation.

And we are very excited because I have just launched the first Rise Up Britain, which is known in Australia as Rise Up Australia by Catch the Fire Ministries of which I am the president. The Lord put in my heart to call on the nation to pray for Australia. It has resulted in major breakthrough throughout the land right now because we have a born-again prime minister, a born-again deputy prime minister, a born-again federal treasurer. We have a born-again attorney general and this is all because of prayer in the last five years. And my challenge to the nation of Great Britain is that the Church needs to come out, the Church needs to unite, stop praying for your needs, start praying for the Kingdom of God.

Going back to the Religious Hatred Bill in the UK, you said the effects of it would be worse in the UK than in Australia. Can you explain a bit about how it varied from the Australian version?

In Australia the legislation was a state law so it was only in the state of Victoria. Thus when the other states proposed the law it got opposed and rejected in Parliament. In Britain it was proposed as a federal law meaning that if it got passed by the federal government it would have been a law covering all of Great Britain. Whereas in Australia it was only restricted to the state of Victoria. Number 2: in Victoria it is a civil law; in Britain it is a criminal law. In Victoria if you got done with the law you would only go in for six months in jail. And the British version of the law warranted a five year period in jail. And so it was definitely far worse than the version in Victoria.

What do you think of the Bill that was eventually put through Parliament. Do you think it is a vast improvement from the originally proposed one?

I think it is a big, big improvement. I think it’s given a lot of room. In a sense Christians never threaten people. The current law says it is only vilification if it is conducted towards threatening a life. And I think it will in a sense help the nation go on its current state.

Do you see any problems with the new Bill?

Well, you have to cross the bridge as it comes because we really don’t know what is going to happen. For example the laws in Victoria were brought in by the politicians to be a shield but it is certainly being used as a sword right now. So the very law that was thought to bring unity to Victoria has caused division and so we are yet to see the outworking of the Bill.

Christian Today would like to thank Pastor Danny for taking time out to speak with us.


About Rise Up Britain: Rise Up Britain is a prayer initiative designed to get people praying all the time to avoid challenges before they appear rather than praying for the crisis after it has developed.

Pastor Danny said, it “is about praying at all times so that you can be proactive and avoid and avert the crisis”.

“I believe prayer will avert the disaster and bring down God’s glory,” he said.

The first Rise Up Britain prayer meeting has just been launched in England with plans to launch a second prayer meeting in Sutton before the end of the month.

“We are praying that it will be duplicated all throughout Britain where groups of people, not a church prayer meeting, but a combined church prayer meeting coming together to pray and hold the ground so that God can be glorified and the nation can come back to the Lord,” said Pastor Danny.

There have also been proposals for the Rise Up Britain prayer initiative to be launched in Parliament to work alongside Baroness Cox in the House of Lords to bring about a point of prayer within the Houses of Parliament where we come together and pray.

For more information on Pastor Daniel Nalliah and the work of the Catch the Fire Ministries go to www.catchthefire.com.au