We’re selling our hotel, say Christian couple in row with Muslim guest

By Jonathan Petre The Daily Mail UK

Last updated at 10:00 PM on 27th March 2010

The two Christian hoteliers cleared last year of insulting a Muslim guest are being forced to sell up because their business has collapsed.

Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang are putting their nine-bedroom hotel up for auction in May because they can no longer pay the mortgage.

Despite donations sent to them by Christian supporters from around the world, they still have debts of well over £400,000.

Business lost: Hoteliers Ben and Sharon VogelenzangBusiness lost: Hoteliers Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang

They are also considering a civil action against the police who brought the prosecution.

Mrs Vogelenzang, 54, said last night it was ‘devastating’ that they could be left with nothing as the result of a case that should never have come to court.

‘Where do we go from here?’ she said. ‘How do we start all over again?’

The couple saw their Liverpool business brought to its knees after an investigation into what was deemed a religiously aggravated hate crime against Ericka Tazi. The 60-year-old white British convert complained that the couple had called the prophet Mohammed a ‘warlord’ and told her that Muslim women were oppressed.

The case against them was thrown out after a judge at Liverpool magistrates’ court said it flew in the face of their right to freedom of religious expression.

After the victory, the couple hoped they would be able to revive the Bounty House Hotel near Aintree racecourse, which they had built up over ten years.

Four months later, however, they have failed to attract enough customers and are losing about £8,000 a month.

One of their main sources of income before the case was the National Health Service, which used Bounty House for doctors attending conferences and groups of patients on pain-relief courses at the Walton Centre, part of Aintree Hospital. But the centre stopped sending guests to the hotel after the complaint by Mrs Tazi, one of its patients.

‘Before the complaint, we were their first choice,’ said Mrs Vogelenzang. ‘But they seem to have lost interest in us. Despite the excellent feedback we received at the end of every course, our reputation hasn’t counted for anything. That is upsetting.’

The couple remain furious with the police for the way the case was handled and are consulting The Christian Institute, the independent pressure group that paid for their defence, about launching a civil action.

Lawyers believe they might be able to claim they were discriminated against because of their Christian background.

Mrs Vogelenzang added: ‘Many people thought that when we won in court, everything would be OK. In reality, it has brought us to the brink of destruction, so it has not been a victory at all.’

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

7 Replies to “We’re selling our hotel, say Christian couple in row with Muslim guest”

  1. Typical crybaby Muslims rip down others who spoke the truth about Mohammad and Muslim women under Islam. I am so sick of these
    mussies and their f—ing jihad. That is what this is, Jihad. Stealth, soft whatever Jihad is Jihad. islam is Jihad and needs to be kicked back to the
    stone age for good. I hope they sue the police and somehow can take the
    mussie bitch to court for slander and defamation of character.

  2. Its all part of the Plan……….

    That is so true on so many levels… Ever heard of any economic activity in mahoundian lands, aside from that forced upon the societies by secular regimes in Turkey (where it’s endangered because of Recep Erdoclown’s sharia monkeys) and Tunisia, and that produced by non-mahoundian Indians and the Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia? No, there ain’t no economic activity of any kind to speak of in true mahoundianism. Everyone just sits around on their rear ends, all goddam day long, waiting for the will of mahound’s imaginary alter-ego allah to manifest itself (everything that happens or doesn’t happen is “insh’allah”, or “mahound’s imaginary alter-ego willing”); when they’re not stealing or plundering the products of non-mahoundians’ work, or getting slaves to do anything that requires actual work, that is. So, it isn’t just that their plan is to deprive us “filthy kufr” of our livelihoods and economic activities… They want to lay the ground for the West to degenerate into insh’allah-certified sharia wonderlands such as Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and you-know-which-other-such-open-sewers. Yeah, THAT too is part of those tapeworms’ islamization/opensewerization efforts.

    As a side note, the weakening of infidels through attacks on their economic activities and freedom is something that I can’t help thinking is part of Buraq Hussein Osama’s plan to wreck the USA and make it more vulnerable to its mahoundian enemies, in addition to his submission to America’s foes and snubbing of/hostility to its true allies (I’m talking true allies such as Israel, not Opensewerabia, not Jordan, not Egypt, not Porkistan, not Afghanistan.)

  3. What ever the rights and wrongs of this case. It was very unprofessional of them to start an argument with a guest. I’d suggest if they can’t treat their guests with proper professional courtesy, they shouldn’t be running a hotel. The market seems to be deciding this as well.

    Certainly if I was to come down to dinner dressed in my satanic robes, still dripping with the blood of a freshly slaughtered virgin, I wouldn’t expect the manager to start an argument on religion with me, or any other subject.

  4. This episode is like a microcosm of how vulnerable whole nations can be from the destabilizing influence of Islam. The West remains the frog in the pot and self-hating nationals are siding with the enemy. Until we declare a war on islam we remain sitting ducks, unable to deport traitors. Pro-islamist self-hating Westerners should emigrate to the islamic nations to which they are loyal.

  5. Chalk up another victory for jiahd’s lawfare tactic.

    Its a wonder they were never vandalised or firebombed.

    The hotel has become another casualty of the spread of Muslim ‘values’ that undermine the once-proud UK’s own values.