CP
“The Free Speech Union is delighted that Hamit Coskun’s appeal has been successful.”
It is, quite simply, a very important victory for free speech today. And if you care about living in a country where you can think, speak, dissent, and yes, offend without the long arm of the state hauling you before a court, then you should be raising a glass to Hamit Coskun tonight.
Because Britain does not have, and must never have, blasphemy laws.
And yet, somehow, in the year 2025, a man was convicted under the Public Order Act for burning a book as a political protest against the rise of political Islam and the increasingly authoritarian regime of President Erdoğan in Turkey.
“The Free Speech Union is delighted that Hamit Coskun’s appeal has been successful.”
That line should ring out like the tolling of a liberty bell. Because this was not just about one protester, one moment, one book. This was about whether Britain was about to sleepwalk into a modern blasphemy code, not written in statute, but enforced by fear.
The Absurdity of the Original Conviction
Incredibly, the court that first convicted Hamit did so not because of what he did, but because of how others reacted. When a man named Moussa Kadri lunged at him with a knife, shouting “I’m going to kill you,” the authorities, in a moment of Orwellian inversion, used that violence against Hamit as proof that Hamit was guilty of causing disorder.
Kadri, astonishingly, was spared jail time. Hamit, meanwhile, was forced into hiding, receiving death threats from extremists.
It is hard to overstate the lunacy of this logic. If we punish the protester for being attacked, we hand veto power over public expression to the most easily offended and the most willing to be violent. As the Free Speech Union rightly warned:
“Had the verdict been allowed to stand, it would have sent a message to religious fundamentalists up and down the country that all they need to do to enforce their blasphemy codes is to violently attack the blasphemer, thereby making him or her guilty of having caused public disorder.”
This was not just a miscarriage of justice. It was a constitutional farce, a moment when the state, through moral cowardice, nearly surrendered its monopoly on reason to the mob.
The Crown Court’s Reversal — and Its Significance
Thankfully, the Crown Court has restored a measure of sanity. It has overturned Hamit’s conviction, making clear that the right to protest — even protest that shocks, offends, and blisters the sensibilities of believers, must be protected.
“Instead, the Crown Court has sent the opposite message — that anti-religious protests, however offensive to true believers, must be tolerated.”
This is exactly as it should be. A liberal democracy is not a safe space. It is a marketplace of ideas, some noble, some vile, all subject to the test of open debate. You can’t have that marketplace if certain ideas are protected by law from criticism or symbolic rejection.
Serious Questions for the CPS
And yet, serious questions remain for the Crown Prosecution Service.
“The CPS has serious questions to answer about how and why he came to be prosecuted in the first place.”
Who decided that burning a book as a form of protest was tantamount to hate speech? Who decided that the correct response to mob outrage was to prosecute the person attacked rather than the attacker?
The CPS should remember that its job is to uphold the law, not the sensibilities of the easily offended.
The Triumph of Free Minds
This is, ultimately, a major victory for free speech. It is a victory not just for Hamit Coskun, but for every artist, writer, comedian, dissident, and plainspoken citizen who refuses to bow before the altar of outrage.
So: well done Toby Young and the Free Speech Union. You fought for principle when others ducked for cover. You defended the oxygen that keeps democracy alive, the right to offend, to dissent, to challenge sacred cows, and to tell the mob: “You do not rule us.”
In an age of digital dogpiles and bureaucratic cowardice, that’s nothing short of heroic.
Find out more at: https://freespeechunion.org
By Jack Lions
This article (A Landmark Victory for Free Speech: Hamit Coskun Overturns Blasphemy Conviction) was created and published by Conservative Post and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Jack Lions
See Related Article Below
Finally, a judge stands up for free speech. This is what we need to do next
Three cheers for Mr Justice Bennathan, but we need to repeal laws that hobble freedom of expression
Thank heavens for Mr Justice Bennathan. He’s the Crown Court judge who, along with two justices of the peace, overturned the conviction of Hamit Coskun, the Turkish political refugee who’d been found guilty of a public order offence after burning a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish consulate.
Had Mr Coskun’s conviction been allowed to stand, it would have created a Muslim blasphemy law by the backdoor. Part of the evidence that his actions led to public disorder was that he’d been attacked by an onlooker, Moussa Kadri, who screamed “I’m going to kill you” as he slashed at him with a knife.
Mr Coskun’s conviction, and the fact that Kadri was spared jail time, sent a message to religious zealots up and down the country that all they needed to do to enforce their blasphemy codes was violently attack the blasphemer, thereby making him guilty of causing public disorder. But the panel at Southwark Crown Court recognised the danger of letting Mr Coskun’s conviction stand.
“There is no offence of blasphemy in our law,” said Mr Justice Bennathan in the judgment handed down earlier today. “Burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive. The criminal law, however, is not a mechanism that seeks to avoid people being upset, even grievously upset. The right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.”
As the head of the Free Speech Union, which split the cost of Mr Coskun’s legal fees with the National Secular Society, I was heartened by this judgment. Not only will it make it difficult for the Crown Prosecution Service to bring cases against other blasphemers – and we are defending another Koran burner due to stand trial in Manchester next month. It will also send a message to the police that we have a legal right in this country to say things, including on social media, that other people find upsetting.
What excuse will the police now have for turning up mob-handed on people’s doorsteps in the middle of the night and arresting them for “offensive” tweets or Facebook posts? It was reported earlier this year that the police are arresting more than 12,000 people a year under suspicion of having committed online speech offences – that’s more than 30 a day – and less than five per cent of them end up being prosecuted. If burning a copy of the Koran on a busy London street isn’t a criminal offence, how can posting something like “transwomen aren’t women” be?
[…]
To properly protect freedom of expression in this country we need to repeal some of the laws fettering it, such as section 127 of the Communications Act, which criminalises sending someone a “grossly offensive” message, and section 179 of the Online Safety Act, which makes it an offence to spread disinformation.
The Telegraph: continue reading
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