A Muslim extremist arrested by British police during the annual Remembrance Day celebrations last November for chanting, “Burn British soldiers, burn in hell” at mourners was fined just £50 by a judge on Monday.

Emdadur Choudhury, 26, was caught on camera dousing several large plastic poppies emblematic of Remembrance Day in gasoline and setting them alight while jeering during the annual two-minute national silence at 11 a.m. on November 11.

The annual Remembrance Day ceremony is held at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month to honor the memory of the millions of Commonwealth and American war dead killed in World Wars i and ii. The red poppy symbolizes the blood that was shed by the Anglo-Saxon nations and their allies as they twice fought and defeated the terrible forces of tyranny.

Choudhury was part of a 40-strong Islamic mob called “Muslims Against Crusades” who call for sharia law in Britain. They had positioned themselves close to London’s Royal Albert Hall, to scream contemptuous invective at serving and former members of the armed forces and their families who were attending the finale of the “Walk for Heroes,” a Remembrance Day tradition.

Offspring of Bangladeshi immigrants, Choudhury receives welfare benefits worth £800 per month, paid out of the treasury of the nation which those war heroes fought to preserve with its freedoms and benefits that he could not obtain in his country of ethnic origin.

Needless to say, Choudhury didn’t bother to turn up to court to hear the judgment against him for the offense.

Judge Howard Riddle rebuked him for showing “disrespect for dead soldiers.” “The two-minute chanting, when others were observing a silence, followed by a burning of the symbol of remembrance,” Judge Riddle said, “was a calculated and deliberate insult to the dead and those who mourn and remember them.” He said he had no doubt that Choudhury had set out to shock and offend. Yet for this insult to his adopted nation the judge fined Choudhury only £50, a mere 5 percent of the maximum £1,000 possible tariff!

Making light of the piffling penalty for his offense, Choudhury later sneered that he would have been fined more than £50 for a parking offense.

The vice chairman of the National Gulf War Veterans and Families Association condemned the slightness of the punishment saying that every serviceman in the country considered the sentence disgusting.

In fact, Choudhury’s punishment would have been harsher if he had dropped the poppies as litter, for which, in Britain, there is a fixed penalty of £80 and a possible maximum fine of £2,500 if prosecuted.

The Islamic zealot leader of the Muslims Against Crusades, Abu Rahin Aziz, part of the same 40-strong Remembrance Day mob that included Choudhury, was, at the time of the protest last November, given a full police guard to protect his home, in Luton, at taxpayers’ expense in case of any citizen reaction against the insulting behavior of his constituents.

Choudhury’s paltry punishment, which will be paid by the state, has caused such outrage here that a major British national newspaper set out to demonstrate how distorted British justice has become by contrasting punishments meted out by British courts on the same day for offenses most would consider far more trivial.

Here are some of those judgments as presented by the Sun newspaper, March 9:

Dog owner Cheryl Edge was ordered to pay £265 in fines and costs after she failed to clear up her Collie’s mess. …Bus driver Gareth Corkhill was fined £225 after leaving his wheelie bin lid four inches ajar, the penalty for “over-filling the receptacle used to dispose of waste”—a criminal offense.In January, Philip Coates became the first person in Britain to be fined for riding a 12mph Segway scooter on the pavement. … He was found guilty of riding a motor vehicle on a pavement and fined £75 with £265 costs at Barnsley Magistrates’ Court.Kenneth Bonnar, who last summer was fined £50 for dropping a burned match down a drain in Derbyshire, was yesterday surprised to find his “crime” was judged to be on the same level as Choudhury’s.

What message does this wooly-headed liberal softness send to the extreme Muslim groups that infest British cities? Just how emboldened will they become when they see Choudhury’s response to his “punishment,” which he is actually calling “a badge of honor”?

How accurately did the Prophet Isaiah speak of our time today! “And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter” (Isaiah 59:14).

Thanks be to God that the day of such offenses and wretchedly poor judgments is fast approaching its end.