At his Holy Smoke blog, Telegraph leader writer and Catholic Herald editor Damian Thompson recycles a story from Robert Spencer’s Dhimmi Watch site:

“After the death of a young Muslim man in a car crash in Sydney last month,” Thompson writes, “an Islamic crowd invaded a hospital in order to stop medical tests being carried out on the body in contravention of Sharia law, according to the Dhimmi Watch website. If the report is true, then this is another example of a global campaign by fundamentalist Muslims to replace civil law by Sharia – a process that has already taken root in British cities.”

Thompson goes on to quote the report from Spencer’s site: “The antecedent to the Muslim incursion on the Hospital came about on Monday the 17 December last, when a young Muslim male was airlifted to the Liverpool Hospital’s emergency ward by helicopter. The 19-year-old had been in a serious car accident, his car left the road and crashed into a tree … he died of his injuries, and it seems he and his hijab-wearing girl friend had been celebrating the end of Ramadan.”

The Australian blog Austrolabe comments: “If the victim and his ‘hijab-wearing girl friend’ were, as the anonymous author claims, celebrating the end of Ramadan when they had a serious car accident, why did this obviously critically injured young man wait two months before he was admitted into a hospital? In 2007, Eid ul-Fitr (the celebration marking the end of Ramadan) was on the 11th of October. This man was supposedly admitted into Liverpool Hospital on 17th December, 2007. We know that waiting lists at Liverpool Hospital are long, but that long?”

Update:  Thompson has recanted. See Austrolabe, 31 January 2008