Sad, Vicious, and Stupid

But is it criminal?

[Samina Malik] had a profile on the social networking website Hi-5, where she called for the execution of "depraved" Westerners .

The British-born Muslim listed her interests as helping the Mujahideen "in any way I can".

She also wrote of how she enjoyed video messages from Osama Bin Laden and "videos that showed massacres of the kuffars", or non-Muslims.

In one poem, called The Living Martyrs, she called for Muslims to rise up against the infidels.

In another, How To Behead, she warned that the victim should be bound and blindfolded.

Malik, who worked as a shop assistant airside in a branch of WHSmith at [Heathrow] airport, also owned an Al Qaeda encyclopaedia of Jihad, a Mujahideen poison handbook and a 'terrorist handbook' which explained how to make bombs.

On the hard drive of her computer police found a copy of a sniper rifle manual, a firearms manual, anti-tank weaponry, a document entitled How To Win Hand To Hand Fighting, and pictures of weapons.

This week a jury found her guilty, under Britain's 2000 anti-terrorism law, of "possessing documents likely to be used for terrorism." She awaits sentencing.

The laws on what you can say and read are different in Britain. Libel laws, for instance, are much more strict. How they run their show is their business. If she were in the U.S., would she be guilty of anything but being a knucklehead? Should she be?

UPDATE: PW has some excerpts:

Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog

Oy. Which calls to mind this:

Third Citizen: Your name, sir, truly.

CINNA THE POET: Truly, my name is Cinna.

First Citizen: Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.

CINNA THE POET: I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

Fourth Citizen: Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.