WILL JONES
Hamit Coskun, the man who set fire to a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish Consulate, has been convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence, with the judge claiming he has a “deep-seated hatred of Muslims”. The Telegraph has more.
Hamit Coskun shouted “f— Islam” and “Islam is religion of terrorism” while holding the religious text above his head during a protest on February 13th.
The 50-year-old, who was violently attacked by a passerby during the demonstration in London, went on trial last week, accused of an offence under the Public Order Act.
At Westminster magistrates’ court on Monday, he was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence of using disorderly conduct, which was motivated “in part by hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam”.
Coskun’s lawyers argued that his prosecution was an attempt by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to reintroduce and expand blasphemy laws in the UK, 17 years after they were abolished.
The CPS said that Mr Coskun was not being prosecuted for burning the book.
They argued it was the combination of his derogatory remarks about Islam and the fact that it was done in public that made it an offence.
The CPS originally charged Coskun, who is an atheist, with harassing the “religious institution of Islam”.
However, the charge was later amended after free speech campaigners took up his cause and argued he was essentially being accused of blasphemy.
District Judge John McGarva said, “there was a real problem with the original charge, which referred to Islam as if it was a person, when it is not”.
He said, however, that the current prosecution was not “an attempt to bring back and expand blasphemy law”.
He said: “A decision needs to be made as to whether your conduct was simply you exercising your right to protest and freedom of speech or whether your behaviour crossed a line into criminal conduct.”
Katy Thorne KC, Coskun’s barrister, had argued that even the amended charges against him effectively criminalised any public burning of a religious book and were tantamount to blasphemy laws.
“It is effectively chilling the right of citizens to criticise religion,” she said.
She said Coskun’s actions were not motivated by hostility towards the followers of Islam but to the religion itself.
Judge McGarva, however, said he did not accept that argument.
Addressing Coskun, he said: “You believe Islam is an ideology which encourages its followers to violent paedophilia and a disregard for the rights of non-believers.
“You don’t distinguish between the two. I find you have a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers. That is based on your experiences in Turkey and the experiences of your family.”
Worth reading in full.
The Free Speech Union tweeted:
This is deeply disappointing. Everyone should be able to exercise their rights to protest peacefully and to freedom of expression, regardless of how offensive or upsetting it may be to some people.
We paid for Hamit’s defence, along with the National Secular Society, and stand ready to provide any assistance Hamit needs to get this judgment overturned. Our support for him remains undiminished.
Religious tolerance is an important British value, but it doesn’t require non-believers to respect the blasphemy codes of believers. On the contrary, it requires people of faith to tolerate those who criticise and protest against their religion, just as their values and beliefs are tolerated.
The FSU is on the front line of the fight to protect lawful free expression in the UK.
Cases like Hamit’s show just how fragile that freedom has become — and how urgently it must be defended.
If you believe no one should be convicted for offending religious sensibilities, join us and help support the work we do.
🚨 BREAKING: Hamit Coskun has been found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence, namely, disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress, because he burnt a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish… pic.twitter.com/25g5mh0LTU
— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) June 2, 2025
Stop Press: Support the FSU crowdfunder for Hamit’s appeal here.
At 12.30pm on Monday June 2nd at Westminster Magistrates Court Hamit Coskum, a man who’d spent almost 10 years in jail in Turkey as a political prisoner, was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public order offence, namely, disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress. Incredibly, part of the prosecution’s evidence that he’d caused someone harassment, alarm or distress was that a Muslim man who witnessed his protest attacked him with a knife. …
This is a really important case. As Hamit himself said after the verdict: “This decision is an assault on free speech and will deter others from exercising their democratic rights to peaceful protest and freedom of expression. As an activist, I will continue to campaign against the threat of Islam. Christian Blasphemy laws were repealed in this country more than 15 years ago and it cannot be right to prosecute someone for blaspheming against Islam. Would I have been prosecuted if I’d set fire to a copy of the bible outside Westminster Abbey? I doubt it.” …
Anything you can contribute to help us fight this important case would be enormously appreciated. We cannot let the authorities introduce a Muslim blasphemy law via the backdoor.
See Related Article Below
Welcome to the Islamic theocracy of Great Britain
Hamit Coskun’s Koran-burning conviction is a shameful affront to liberal, Enlightenment values.
TOM SLATER EDITOR
It’s a verdict that would make the Ayatollah smile. Today, in nominally liberal Britain, a man has been found guilty of a crime after he dared to burn a Koran in public. Hamit Coskun, a Turkish-born asylum seeker, has been convicted of a ‘religiously aggravated public-order offence’ over his – quite literally – incendiary protest outside of the Turkish consulate in London in February, against what he sees as the Islamist turn of Erdogan’s Turkey. If nothing else, Coskun’s stunt has exposed the Islamist-apologist turn of our own United Kingdom.
On paper, Coskun has been convicted of ‘disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress’, motivated by ‘hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam’, contrary to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Public Order Act 1986. But we all know what that word salad really means in practice, regardless of the judge’s many assurances to the contrary. Coskun has been convicted, and fined £240, for blasphemy. All by a supposedly secular court.
The judgement, handed down by district judge John McGarva, is an elaborate exercise in victim-blaming. Coskun was assaulted at the scene by two men – first by a passerby armed with a knife, then by a delivery rider who kicked Coskun while he was on the floor. Remarkably, this is used as proof of his guilt. ‘That the conduct was disorderly is no better illustrated than by the fact that it led to serious public disorder involving him being assaulted by two different people’, says McGarva. Thank God he wasn’t also wearing a short skirt, eh?
Similar intellectual acrobatics were required to prove that Coskun was motivated by a hatred of Muslims. He claims his beef is with the religion, not its followers. But McGarva was having none of it, citing Coskun’s belief that ‘Islam is an ideology which encourages its followers to violence, paedophilia, and a disregard for the rights of non-believers’. Whether or not this is an accurate or fair reflection of the faith, as practised by Muslims around the world, is totally irrelevant. The judge decided there was no difference between Coskun’s dislike of what he means by Islam and hatred of Muslims. So he hates Muslims because he hates Islam. I’m no legal scholar, but that strikes me as a rather circular argument.
In a free society, you should be free to hate whoever and whatever you like, of course. Indeed, this ruling is another grim reminder of the subjective, authoritarian mess you find yourself in when you invite the state to police what is and isn’t hateful – whether that’s racial, religious or whatever. Someone has to decide. And in this case it has been decided by a legalistic cretin who is totally blasé about ushering in medieval blasphemy prohibitions, albeit dressed up in hate-speech lingo.
Britain may have abolished its blasphemy law in 2008, more than three decades after the last blasphemy trial went to court. But it has returned, zombie-like, through public-order and communications offences. Coskun’s isn’t even the first trial of this kind. An English Defence League member was similarly convicted for religiously aggravated harassment in 2011, after he burned a Koran at a demonstration. Belfast preacher Pastor James McConnell was put on trial in 2015 for calling Islam ‘Satanic’ in his own pulpit. Given his sermon was also streamed online they tried (and, mercifully, failed) to stick him on making ‘grossly offensive’ comments under the Communications Act.
Brace yourselves for more. Not least as Coskun – who either has balls of steel or is nursing a death wish – has said he intends to go on a Koran-burning tour of some of the UK’s other great cities. So it might not be long before he ends up back in handcuffs again, unless ‘alarmed or distressed’ members of the community get to him first. We’re also still awaiting the sentencing of a man who burned his own copy of the Koran in Manchester just two weeks before Coskun’s stunt. (He immediately pleaded guilty.) For their part, Greater Manchester Police released not only his name, but also his address, to make it that bit easier for Islamist thugs to find him.
It won’t have escaped your attention that our new backdoor blasphemy laws only seem to cover one religion in particular. Those who seek to ringfence Islam – and Islam alone – from ridicule or criticism no doubt believe they are protecting an embattled little guy. But Coskun’s case rather complicates that narrative. The – incidentally – diminutive Coskun, an atheist, is seeking asylum in the UK, claiming he faced political persecution in his native Turkey. Now, he has been made a criminal before his asylum claim has even been processed. What’s more, the evidence from across the Islamic world is that it is liberal Muslims, dissenting Muslims and ex-Muslims who bear much of the brunt of blasphemy laws and anti-blasphemy violence. Acquiescing to this religious intolerance means throwing apostates and the minorities within Islam under the proverbial bus.
If we’re honest, this is as much about cowardice as it is idiocy. The reason laws are being mangled to punish anti-Islamic blasphemy is because there are hardline factions within Islam willing to take matters into their own hands otherwise. But that is no reason to give in. As the horrors in Pakistan show us – where blasphemers are punished via the law and the lynchmob – official intolerance only fuels and justifies violent intolerance. Plus, this double standard where Islam is concerned relies on a despicable caricature of British Muslims, as if they are strange, volatile characters who must forever be tiptoed around; exotic brutes who cannot possibly be expected to live in a truly free and secular society. As is so often the case under state multiculturalism, we are anointing the loudest, most intolerant, even Islamist, voices as the authentic voice of British Muslims.
One of the enduring arguments for blasphemy laws is that they are essential to maintaining order and harmony in society. As Lord Scarman put it in 1979 – when the House of Lords was reviewing England’s last successful blasphemy trial – blasphemy laws ‘safeguard the internal tranquility of the kingdom’. He even wanted our then Christian blasphemy laws extended to other religions, for the good of our increasingly ‘plural society’. How wrong he was. Free speech isn’t a recipe for conflict. It’s how we have out our differences without resorting to the sword or the law. Censorship, on the other hand? That way division – and violence – lies.
Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater
This article (Welcome to the Islamic theocracy of Great Britain) was created and published by Spiked Online and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Tom Slater, Editor
Featured image: x.com
••••
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
••••
Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
••••
Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
••••
Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Liberty Beacon Project.
Leave a Reply