Kangaroo court

Religion | Beaten, chased, tried, convicted, and released, pastor Daniel Scot can’t stop speaking out about Islam | Mindy Belz

NEW YORK— Daniel Scot steps to the lectern wearing a buttoned-up shirt and carefully combed, close-cut hair—clearly the mathematics professor that he is, more at home in a classroom of students than this ballroom of chandeliers and cocktail dresses. A bit of numbers and history is necessary to understand what has summoned the 55-year-old Pakistani-born pastor to be guest of honor at the Metropolitan Club, a Renaissance revival mansion commissioned by J.P. Morgan just a block off New York's Central Park.

Scot's journey to the lectern began nearly five long years—and over half a million dollars—ago. In March 2002 he spoke at a seminar on the differences between Christianity and Islam and described ways Christians can reach out to Muslims. Like his speech in New York, his talks are sprinkled with frequent reference to passages in the Quran, traced out with the precision of a quadratic equation. For those remarks an Islamic council brought him up on charges of "religious vilification" and a judge found him guilty on 19 counts.