There's no way to untwist this pretzel, but let's try. (A) The prosecutor rightly suspected Abu Hamza would defend himself against charges of incitement and hatred by claiming he was preaching from the Koran. (B) The prosecutor isn't criticizing the Koran, which Abu Hamza was preaching from. (C) He's just criticizing what Abu Hamza was saying.
If a circular argument is one that doesn't get anywhere, this prosecutor is chasing his tail. But he still can't get away from the Koran, not when the defense counsel is actually passing out copies to jurors. Mr. Fitzgerald's idea is, with their own Korans, jurors will be better able to follow the Koranic justifications for, as the London Times Online put it, "the words that had led to (Abu Hamza) being charged."
If these machinations -- now you see the Koran, now you don't -- makes your head hurt, that's a good thing, evidence that key mental functions still function independently of PC. This doesn't, however, make the tortuous thinking of the British barristers easier to follow. In essence, the prosecution is saying: It's preaching murder, so it's not the Koran. In sum, the defense is saying: It's the Koran, so it's not preaching murder. What are they talking about?
In a sense, nothing. And that's the way they like it. Both the prosecution and the defense have decided that Islam plays no animating role in the modern jihadist movement of which Abu Hamza is a part. When the prosecutor describes Abu Hamza's preaching -- "holy war in the cause of Allah" as a "religious obligation" that includes the killing of non-believers -- he is describing the classic jihad ideology that has driven Islamic history; but he attributes it to Abu Hamza's idiosyncratic version of Islam. The defense, meanwhile, takes the same preaching -- "the language of blood and retribution," Mr. Fitzgerald says -- and declares it no different from any other religion's language.
In other words, whether Abu Hamza does hard time, jihad gets a pass.