The Free Speech Union (FSU) is attempting to establish contact with Hamit Coskun, a 50-year-old man charged with a religiously aggravated public order offence after he burned a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London. The case has sparked fears that England and Wales are on the brink of reviving blasphemy laws by stealth, despite having formally abolished them in 2008.
Mr Coskun was arrested and charged on Saturday after footage circulated on X showing a man setting fire to a book outside the Turkish consulate in Knightsbridge. Moments later, a second man appears to attack him, repeatedly slashing at him with a knife and the kicking him as he lay on the floor.
Mr Coskun appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Saturday, where he pleaded not guilty. He was released on conditional bail ahead of his trial on May 28.
Meanwhile, the alleged assailant, Moussa Kadri, 59, has been charged with actual bodily harm and possession of an offensive weapon. He was also granted bail and is due in court on Monday.
The case has sparked widespread concern about the creeping criminalisation of religious offence in Britain. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is now pursuing legal action against a man whose actions, while deeply offensive to some, appear to have been a political protest rather than an attack on individual Muslims.
At the heart of the case is whether Mr Coskun’s actions fall under protected political expression or breach public order laws. Under Sections 4A and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, it is an offence to use “threatening, abusive, or insulting words or behaviour” intended (or likely) to cause harassment, alarm, or distress. The charge is further aggravated under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which applies if hostility towards a religious group was a motivating factor.
However, legal experts and free speech advocates argue that burning a Koran outside an embassy, if intended as a political statement rather than an act of religious hostility, does not necessarily meet this threshold. The European Court of Human Rights has previously ruled that political speech and symbolic expression, even when offensive, enjoys strong protection under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (Gündüz v Turkey, 2003; Vajnai v. Hungary, 2008). The CPS will need to demonstrate that Mr Coskun’s act was not just offensive but also amounted to an unlawful public order offence.
Former minister Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has warned that the decision to prosecute Mr Coskun risks creating a de facto blasphemy law, with the Koran seemingly enjoying a special status above other religious texts.
Writing on X, Mr Jenrick acknowledged that burning a Torah scroll outside a synagogue or a Koran outside a mosque might meet the threshold for a public order offence, given the potential for incitement. But he argued that burning a religious book as a political protest, in this case, allegedly against Turkey’s policies, should not fall within the scope of the law.
“Burning a Koran outside the Turkish consulate, allegedly to protest at Turkey’s political stance, would not seem to meet that bar. Nor indeed would burning a Torah scroll outside the Israeli embassy or a Bible outside the Apostolic Nunciature (Vatican embassy).”
Jenrick also highlighted the unique status that some Muslims afford to the Koran, suggesting that this case could establish a dangerous precedent where any public act deemed offensive to a religious group becomes a criminal matter:
“Criminalising the burning of the Koran in any setting, if there happens to be someone in the vicinity who finds it offensive, creates a blasphemy law by the back door – and a blasphemy law which really only applies to one religion.”
The FSU is now attempting to make contact with Mr Coskun to assess whether he requires legal or advocacy support. This case raises fundamental questions about the state of free speech in Britain, particularly whether Article 10 ECHR, which guarantees freedom of expression, is being upheld in practice.
Mr Coskun’s case follows another recent prosecution, in which a 47-year-old Manchester man pleaded guilty to a religiously aggravated public order offence after being filmed tearing pages from the Koran and setting them alight while holding an Israeli flag.
Judge Margaret McCormack asked for a pre-sentence report before passing sentence. She told the defendant: “The Koran is a sacred book to Muslims and treating it as you did is going to cause extreme distress. This is a tolerant country, but we just do not tolerate this behaviour.”
In England and Wales, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (Section 79) repealed the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in 2008, yet prosecutions such as these suggest that authorities are now policing ‘religious offence’ under different legal mechanisms. If the courts uphold this prosecution, it could set a chilling precedent: that causing offence to religious sensibilities is, in itself, a crime.
There’s more on this story here.
Kenan Malik has also written in The Observer on the slow creep of a secular blasphemy law. He points out that, however senseless, the destruction of symbolic objects has long been a form of protest—one that liberal democracies should be wary of discarding. You can read his piece here.
