A Woman Got Banned from Every Soccer Stadium in the UK for Ripping Up the Qu’ran at a Game

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

You know how it is: You're getting ready to watch a sporting event, you've got one foot out the door, and you do a quick pocket pat. Got your wallet? Got your ticket? Got your bobble hat and scarf? Do you have one of them clacker things, or a vuvuzela? Do you have $12 for a shit hotdog? Oh, and do you have a copy of the Qu'ran to shred into pieces in the direction of Lee Clark? Well then, let's go down the football. COME ON, MIDDLESBROUGH! LET'S BOSS THEM SO HARD THAT MUHAMMAD FEELS IT!

Middlesbrough fan Julie Phillips did this. Middlesbrough fan Julie Phillips just got banned from every field in England and Wales for ripping up the Qu'ran at the Middlesbrough–Birmingham game last December. Middlesbrough fan Julie Phillips—when asked why she ripped up pages of the Qu'ran at a Middlesbrough-Birmingham game—said she didn't know it was the Qu'ran. She just thought it was a book.

Two things, Julie: Why would you rip up any book at a soccer match? That doesn't make any sense. That doesn't prove anything.

Second: If you're going to rip up a book at a soccer match, which—as we've already established—makes no fucking sense at all, please check that it is absolutely any book on earth apart from the Qu'ran. Please just make that basic check. Fifty Shades of Grey? Shred it. Harry Potter, one through seven? Shred the fucker. The Qu'ran? Definitely don't shred the Qu'ran.

But Julie doesn't give a fuck about my advice. Julie was going HAM, pulling pages of the holy text out by the handful and distributing them to some 700 traveling Boro fans to shred like confetti. Did Julie know what she was doing? It tends to say "Qu'ran" on the front. And yet, at a hearing at Birmingham Magistrates' Court in May, Julie and fellow supporter Gemma Parkin denied it was a "racially aggravated" offense.

Anyway, following the trial in May, Cleveland Police applied to the court in Teesside to have Phillips banned from every football field in England and Wales, claiming the Qu'ran incident was just the tip of the acting-like-an-utter-shitshow iceberg that had already seen her banned from Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium. The court heard that, while traveling back from another game, she was abusive towards members of the British Transport Police, and was arrested at a home game previously for racially abusing a steward. All of which does little to support the "didn't know it was the Qu'ran" hypothesis.

James Langley, a lawyer for the Cleveland Police, said Phillips' ban should serve as a warning to other fans. For her part, Phillips thinks Middlesbrough issuing her with a lifetime ban was "very harsh", and she's since lost her job with Middlesbrough Council. (Presumably for shredding important documents without checking what they were.)

Anyway, while the idea of a female soccer hooligan might sound like the premise for a shitty and short-lived West End musical ( Hard Bitches, or something like that), what's curious about the Phillips case is how much she went out of her own way to be really racist for no reason. Like: quite a bad year for racism, all told. The police are still racist. Fashion is still racist. Wigan chairman Dave Whelan is still racist. Just seems weird that with all that going on you'd still go to a soccer game and throw bits of the Qu'ran about. Get a hobby, Julie Phillips. Sort your life out.

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