It shouldn’t be illegal to burn a Qur’an

Britain is a country where, once more, it appears to be a crime to commit blasphemy. This is the inevitable and justifiable conclusion many have made following the news yesterday that a man who burnt a copy of the Qur’an was charged with “harassment, alarm or distress” against “the religious institution of Islam.”

The charge made against Hamit Coskun, who allegedly performed the act outside the Turkish Consulate in London in February, is thought to be the first time anybody has been prosecuted for harassing an “institution,” in the form of Islam, under the Public Order Act. Following a backlash to the news, the Crown Prosecution Service has since sought to clarify that the wording of the charge was “incorrectly applied.” It has now “substituted a new charge.”

The National Secular Society has been volubly alarmed at the case, suggesting it could presage “the reinstatement of an offense of blasphemy in English law by the back door.” Others have raised concerns to the same effect. Senior lawyer Akua Reindorf said that the original charge was “tantamount” to blasphemy, an act abolished as a common law offense in England and Wales in 2008. Comedian and GB News presenter Leo Kearse articulated a vein of popular disquiet more tersely: “Is Britain now an Islamic theocracy?”

While overstating the case, Kearse’s sentiments do reflect a widespread worry in this country, one evident ever since the Satanic Versus affair of 1989, that Islam in Britain is afforded undue and disproportionate protection, because successive governments and the legal system have been fearful of aggravating race relations. The kid-gloves approach to this religion, and some of its more belligerent followers and preachers, has been seen by many as a form of appeasement by the ruling classes, conspicuously the naïve liberals who still cling to the belief that multiculturalism is an inherently worthwhile ideal. A perceived “two-tier” approach to justice embodied in this Labour government, in which white people often seem to get a inordinately raw deal across the board, has only heightened the suspicion that duplicity and cowardice remain the order of the day.

While “two-tier” Britain may be a specific, timely political concern for many, others are foremost worried about the incursion and re-introduction of religious belief and its attendant strictures into the arena of justice, a place where impartiality and a level playing field ought to hold sway. Hence interventions from the National Secular Society and the Free Speech Union. The latter has written to the CPS arguing that the burning of the Qur’an in this instance was an act of political protest.

People of various hues are right to be alarmed. Whether you are a progressive, liberal secularist, or a conservative anxious about this country’s historic, indigenous, Christian culture, many correctly fear that this signifies the incursion or return of religious dogma into that public domain – abetted by bien pensants who would appease a faith which is not always over-keen in reciprocating respect and tolerance.

But to protest that this prosecution represents simply an atavistic regression to the bad old days of pre-Enlightenment religious intolerance and medieval theocracy is to understand only half the story. This is a very modern episode, epitomizing an all-too-modern malaise, as the words of shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick intimate:

“Burning the Qur’an, like any religious text, is something that some people find very offensive and few people would condone, but that’s not the point. There are many things in our society that people find offensive, but that doesn’t make them criminal.”

Cosku’s alleged transgression was not just insulting a religion which many ethnic minority people and voters take very seriously; he crossed the line by potentially offending and hurting the feelings of others. Causing offense is the principle secular taboo of our times, one we witness in myriad forms, whether it be embodied in the thousands of non-crime hate incidents recorded yearly in regards to people who have broken no law but have said horrid things; woke codes of etiquette that proliferate on campus and throughout the public sector warning us to be careful with the “inappropriate” language we might use; to the current Employments Rights Bill, which could force British businesses to monitor the potentially distressing conversations of their customers or risk being sued for “third-party harassment.”

The prospect of a person in Britain being criminalized for burning the Qur’an represents unreasonable prejudices that are both ancient and modern. It signifies a throwback to irrationality and the unwarranted deference afforded to religion, while also betraying our undue preoccupation with hurting people’s feelings and of being oversensitive to matters pertaining to race.

Whether this case represents ancient or modern forms of intolerance and unreason, this charge is an affront to principles we should hold eternal and inviolable: that of freedom of expression and freedom to dissent.