Last October, we reported that Britain had “narrowly avoided blasphemy laws in disguise.” Now, they are very much back on the cards, and could be introduced as soon as this Tuesday.
This is due to the case of Hamit Coskun, a Turkish asylum seeker who burned a copy of the Quran outside his country’s London embassy while shouting, “Islam is a religion of terrorism.” A Muslim man slashed Coskun with a knife and shouted, “I’m going to kill you,” but was spared jail.
Coskun was initially convicted last June of a breach of the Public Order Act, despite supporters noting that “he hurt no one” and “he threatened no one.” The conviction was later overturned on appeal, with Justice Joel Bennathan affirming that there is no offence of blasphemy in UK law, and upholding the “right to offend.”
The Crown Prosecution Service is attempting to reverse the decision, and will have its case heard at the High Court on February 17th.
Free Speech Union founder Toby Young has warned that “if the court overturns his acquittal and upholds the conviction, that will effectively create a Muslim blasphemy law by the back door.”
It will send a message to Muslim fanatics up and down the country that if they want to enforce Islamic blasphemy codes, all they have to do is violently attack the blasphemer, and the blasphemer will then be charged with a religiously aggravated public order offence.
It’s a recipe for chaos. It will be the death knell for free speech in Britain. It will cause a huge rise in community tensions.
Donald Trump’s administration has also said it is in talks to help Coskun flee Britain if he loses his case. One official described this as “one of several cases the administration has made note of.”
Coskun himself toldThe Daily Telegraph that “as the victim of Islamic terrorism, I cannot remain silent. I may be forced to flee the UK and move to the U.S.A., where President Trump has stood for free speech and against Islamic extremism.”
If I have to do so, then, to me, the UK will have effectively fallen to Islamism and the speech codes that it wishes to impose on the non-Muslim world.
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
