The Five Demands

Church raps Order over ‘jihad’ remarks (UTV)
The Orange Order has come in for criticism from the Presbyterian Church, over a statement in which a Belfast lodge accused the Parades Commission of waging a “jihad” against them.
Ballymacarrett District Lodge, whose chaplain is Presbyterian minister Rev Mervyn Gibson, said a ruling that only the hymn Abide With Me should be played at a parade through a nationalist area of east Belfast was “an action worthy of the Taliban religious police”.
The statement, released in April this year, also referred to the Commission’s members as “Mullahs”.
The remarks – branded “inappropriate, intemperate and inflammatory” by the Church – were not attributed to Rev Gibson, but he was separately quoted as accusing the Parades Commission of “fanning flames of division”.
The Commission had written to the Church to complain.
In its reply, the Church said references drawn from what they called “the highly emotive vocabulary of Islamic fundamentalism” could really only be used “with the intention of causing offence”.
Rev Gibson told UTV he was disappointed the Church had decided to reply to the Parades Commission’s complaint without first speaking to him.
He said he was not overly impressed with their response.
At the time, a spokesman for the Parades Commission said the determination represented “a genuine effort on our part to accommodate the desire of the local lodge to parade and the expressed concerns of local residents”.