English police have dropped a criminal investigation into a Christian pastor who was arrested last November for expressing his views on Islam and transgender ideology while preaching on a public street.
However, Pastor Dia Moodley is now considering legal action against the police for violating his free speech rights and failing to protect him from threats made by a Muslim man as the investigation was ongoing, according to a press release from legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.
The comments that prompted Moodley’s arrest were made during a sermon given in a public area in Bristol on November 22, 2025. Police said he was arrested on suspicion of “inciting religious hatred” and committing a “religiously aggravated public order offence,” according to ADF International.
Moodley was forced to spend eight hours in a cell and was subjected to a police visit to his home, interrogation, and an initial imposition of bail conditions that banned him from Bristol’s city center, effectively restricting him from preaching.
ADF International said that the bail conditions were dropped, but the criminal investigation continued and constituted “de facto censorship,” as Moodley did not publicly preach for several months for fear of being arrested again.
However, he resumed preaching in public April 4, the day before Easter. While preaching on the Resurrection, Moodley reportedly said, “Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed and your favourite philosopher did not rise from the dead, only Jesus rose from the dead.”
A Muslim man reportedly called his words “disgusting” and told Moodley, “If you do that again bro, we’ll send the boys round… we’ll have someone have a word with you.”
Though Moodley reported the man to the police and provided video evidence of the interaction, officers told him May 1 that unpleasant comments “do not constitute an offence.” They also told him that they could not be sure of the “context of his comments” and called the statement “insufficient evidence to proceed at this time.”
The police dropped the criminal investigation April 8. In the release, Moodley said he is grateful the investigation is over but emphasized that he “never should have been arrested, treated like a criminal, and investigated for months for peacefully sharing my faith in the public square.”
He later added, “I will continue to share my faith publicly, undeterred by the police’s censorship and the threats and violence I have faced, and will stand for free speech not just for myself, but for the rights of all people in the UK.”
As CatholicVote reported in 2024, Moodley had previously been arrested in March 2024 for contrasting Islam and Christianity’s moral teachings and affirming binary sex during a public sermon.