Hamit in Wonderland

The trial and conviction of Hamit Coskun bodes ill for speech and protest in Britain, tests the limits of reason, and recasts blasphemy as public disorder

“Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

England is fated to undergo great change under the reign of kings named Charles.

Charles I got himself executed amid civil war and rebellion.

Charles II presided over the Great Fire of London, the sale of Dunkirk, and the chartering of the East India Company.

Charles III, addressing ‘Faith Leaders’ in September 2022, told them he had “always thought of Britain as a ‘community of communities,’” and paid poetic lip service to the delicate balance of governing a society in which people of faith are not afforded the whip hand over unbelievers and detractors:

I hold myself bound to respect those who follow other spiritual paths, as well as those who seek to live their lives in accordance with secular ideals.

In May 2025, over the course of three days at Westminster Magistrates' Court (uncharitably rated 2.2 stars on Google Reviews), the trial of Rex v. Hamit Coskun exposed a dangerous blind spot in the King’s self-imposed “duty to protect the diversity of our country”.

Circular argumentation, logical fallacies, and an ignorance of the relevant source material all orbited around a single centre of gravity, a critical failure to acknowledge the overwhelming importance of one question that many thought the 2008 repeal of Britain’s blasphemy laws had answered for good: When religious sensitivities are at odds with “secular ideals”, which should be granted legal protection?

The Criminal

Hamit Coskun (pronounced Josh-kun) is a fifty-year-old Turkish asylum seeker who speaks A1 (Beginner) English and lives in Derby on an asylum support allowance of £49.18 per week. He is stocky, swarthy, and balding, with grey hair neatly cropped around the back of his head.

His mother is Armenian and his father is Kurdish, two beleaguered minorities with a long history of grievances against the Turkish ruling class. Coskun’s life in Turkey was spent being hounded and imprisoned by the authorities because of his Marxist political sympathies and activities as an atheist campaigning for secularism. The 22-year reign of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a “You vote, I win” ‘dictator in all but name’ according to the Guardian, has included a politically expedient embrace of Islamism which, among other factors, led Coskun to abandon his home country.

The Crime

According to the agreed facts in the case, Coskun “travelled to London with a Koran and a lighter” on 13 February, stood by the security barrier at the top of Rutland Gardens in Knightsbridge within shouting distance of the Consulate General of Turkey, “set fire to his copy of the Koran and held it aloft and burnt it”. While he did this, “he shouted words including ‘Fuck Islam’, ‘Islam is religion of terrorism’, and ‘Koran is burning’”.

On X, where his profile describes him as a “Political traveller, activist, atheist”, he had posted in advance saying that he was planning the action in protest against the erosion of secularism in Turkey under Erdoğan’s leadership, who he claimed had turned the country into “a base for radical Islamists”.

The date Coskun chose for his protest was two weeks after the murder of the Iraqi Christian Koran-burner Salwan Momika in Stockholm on 29 January. Momika was shot and killed in his home during a TikTok livestream while awaiting the verdict in his trial for “agitation against an ethnic group”. Momika’s fellow defendant Salwan Najem was convicted of hate crimes on 3 February because he “trod on copies of the Quran and set them alight while making derogatory remarks about Muslims.”

The Video

Coskun’s protest was captured on video by an anonymous bystander. In the two minutes of footage, shown as evidence by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in their case against him (embedded below in redacted form), he can be seen holding the flaming book aloft and saying “Islam is religion of terrorism” loudly before a man emerges from a nearby building and asks him something inaudible along the lines of “What’s this?”

---

Note: The CPS have blurred and silenced elements of the picture and audio in the video due to their pending case against the man who attacked Coskun. We’re permitted to report on some of those elements as heard and seen in open court, but you may notice they are absent in the video.

---

“Islam is religion of terrorism,” Coskun repeats. “Koran is burning.”

“Why are you burning the Koran?” asks the man.

“Koran terrorist,” says Coskun.

“You fucking idiot, go from here,” the man says angrily.

“Fuck you,” Coskun replies.

“Idiot. One sec, I’m coming back, idiot. I’m going to fucking kill you.”

The man goes back inside. Coskun turns around, holds the Koran up, and says “Fuck Islam, Islam religion of terror.”

“Crazy in London today, guys,” the person filming says from behind the camera. “The guy’s actually burning the Koran, which is a bit wrong really, if you want my opinion, it’s somebody’s book, someone’s holy book, y’know?”

The person filming then observes that the man has returned with a knife in his hand and shouts “Boss!” to warn Coskun as the man attacks him, swinging the weapon at him wildly. Trying to evade his attacker, Coskun runs into the road where traffic is passing, trips and falls down.

The man stomps on him, yells “You fucking idiot, you burn the Koran?!” and picks up the still-burning book. He then spits on Coskun, who is prostrate in the road, kicks him again, slashes at him with the weapon in his hand, and rounds on the person filming as he tries to calm him down.

“Don’t come to me, I’m just filming, yeah?” says the bystander defensively.

That turns the attacker’s attention back to Coskun, who is still lying injured in the road. He spits on Coskun repeatedly and shouts “This is my religion, you don’t burn the Koran!”

A delivery rider standing beside them with his bicycle then kicks Coskun as well, drawing a cry of “What are you doing?” from the person filming.

A van driver in the road toots his horn and shouts from his open window. “He’s on the floor, you fucking bully!”

Standing a few paces away now, the attacker makes a start back at Coskun, saying “You don’t burn fucking…” to which the person filming replies “He just did, he’s done it.”

Finally, in a moment of commentary that could, in essence, stand in for the entire trial and the societal quandary it represents, the person filming says “He shouldn’t be burning the book, but he shouldn’t be coming out with a knife.”

The Charges

On 14 February, Coskun was charged by the Metropolitan Police after being interviewed under caution. The wording of the charge was surprising, and controversial:

On 13/02/2025 at CITY OF WESTMINSTER in the Borough of Westminster with intent to cause against the religious institution of ISLAM harassment, alarm or distress displayed some writing, sign or other visible representation which was threatening, abusive or insulting thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress and the offence was religiously aggravated within the terms of section 28 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998

Contrary to section 31(b) and (4) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

The surprise and controversy stemmed from the fact that the “religious institution of Islam” is not a legal person in British law, and as such cannot be the victim of a crime. The wording of the charge caused a backlash from media, politicians, and commentators, with Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick stating that the case risked bringing in “a de facto blasphemy law by the back door”.

On 8 May, seventeen years to the day after the repeal of Britain’s blasphemy laws received royal assent, the CPS “amended the charge to ensure it more accurately reflected the alleged offence”. They split the charge against Coskun into two public order offences, filed “in the alternative to each other”, one “simple” and one “religiously aggravated”, so that he could be found guilty of both, or one, or neither.

The “simple” charge reads:

Hamit Coskun, on 13 February 2025 in the vicinity of the Turkish Consulate at Rutland Gardens, London SW7, used disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby, in that he set fire to a copy of the Quran and held it aloft while he shouted, ‘Fuck Islam’ and ‘Islam is religion of terrorism’ and ‘Quran is burning’, contrary to section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986.

The “religiously aggravated” charge is identical except for an extra bit at the end:

“…and at the time of doing so, and in doing so, he was motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam, based on their membership of that group, contrary to section 31(1)(c) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986.”

Ironically, the outcry over the initial charge may have saved the CPS’s case.

District Judge John McGarva, who presided over the trial, said at one point that “the charge originally before the Court was misconceived [and] could never have succeeded.”

By kicking up a fuss over the “religious institution of Islam” wording, politicians, activists, and the media may have inspired the CPS to get creative in pursuing the case against Coskun without the problematic language that would have scuppered it.

The CPS strategy instead became a circular argument with worrying implications for public assembly, protest, and free speech in the future.

As laid out by prosecutor Philip McGhee over the course of the trial:

This Defendant is not being prosecuted for burning the Koran, he’s being prosecuted for his disorderly behaviour in public.

[…]

Simply burning a book is not a criminal offence. Simply expressing trenchant criticism of a religion is not a criminal offence.

His actions and words taken together were disorderly…led to public disorder [and] the fact that public disorder broke out…is evidence [of disorderly conduct].

To summarise, Coskun:

• protested on a public roadway without blocking traffic or pedestrians, which is not a crime;

• burnt a book, which is not a crime;

• swore and said some rude things about a religion, which are not crimes;

• was assaulted by two people who voluntarily stopped to watch him do legal things and got angry at him.

So when Coskun was attacked by people who didn’t like what he was doing, even though no single element of what he was doing was illegal, he became guilty of a public order offence in the eyes of the CPS.

This exchange on X between the MPs Rupert Lowe and Adnan Hussain in response to the CPS’s amendment of the charges on May 8 sums up the air gap in this ‘logic’ quite well:

Hussain’s last response is notable for two reasons. First, he deftly substitutes an implication of prejudice for his own equally divisive suggestion that Muslims should receive a special carve-out to protect their notorious sensitivities towards legal things they don’t like, such as burning the Koran. Second, and perhaps more insidiously, he defines free speech “protections” as protections from speech.

In his formulation (“free speech comes with limitations and protections”), the “limitations” limit what can be said and the “protections” are rules protecting the listener from what other people say.

This is a Member of Parliament, someone responsible for safeguarding civil liberties and making, changing, and repealing laws. Where are the rights of the speaker in his vision of free speech?

The Trial

The courtroom was conference room white, with charmless fluorescent lighting hanging in strips from the tiled ceiling. The wood panelling on the walls matched the rows of bland wooden tables arrayed facing the judge’s dais, on the wall behind which hung the motto of the British monarchy beneath a lion salient: “Dieu et mon droit” (God and my right).

Judge John McGarva oversaw two days of arguments and summations before delivering his verdict on Day Three, significantly overrunning the initially-scheduled three hours. Despite requests from the defence to the contrary, and the ramifications of the issues raised by the case, it’s concerning that someone thought the whole thing could be wrapped up in less time than it takes to watch Martin Scorsese’s film The Irishman.

Coskun’s defence, delivered in court by Katy Thorne KC, is being jointly funded by the National Secular Society and the Free Speech Union, bedfellows one would expect in a blasphemy trial. Both parties have not only committed to covering the legal costs of fighting the case and the appeal, but also to meeting the not-inconsiderable costs of Coskun’s security and any fines levied against him if he loses.

On the first day, sixteen people were packed into the gallery, a small glass-fronted area at the back of the courtroom with two rows of seats. Journalists from the Press Association, Daily Mail, the Telegraph, and Anadolu attended, as well as representatives of the National Secular Society, Free Speech Union, and Humanists UK, with Alex van Terheyden from The Wondering Englishman and your humble correspondent flying the independent media banner.

McGhee set out the prosecution’s case, telling the judge that “in the circumstances that prevailed in this particular case, [Coskun’s actions'] were disorderly” and “led to the commission of other offences”, i.e. him being assaulted by two bystanders.

Regarding the charge that the defendant “used disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”, McGhee explained an aspect of the law as terrifying as it is extraordinary: “There need not be evidence of anyone in fact being caused harassment, alarm, or distress”.

If, like me, you had been labouring under a misapprehension on this, it’s time for a newsflash: The Public Order Act can be enforced even if there is no person actually “within the hearing or sight” of the alleged incident, or nobody present who is actually caused harassment, alarm, or distress. The police and the CPS can decide that it was likely that harassment, alarm, or distress could have been caused, and on that basis arrest, charge, and prosecute. Whether they do so or not is a matter of discretion, not law.

As Stephen Evans, the chief executive of the National Secular Society, later told me during a break, there is no “real plaintiff” in this case, “just a likely theoretical person on whose behalf the CPS is filing charges”.

In the words of one journalist I spoke with, “they haven’t established a victim”.

At one point during his oral argument, McGhee produced the police evidence bag containing the partially-burnt Koran and told the judge that, when interviewed by police, Coskun had said it “is a terror book” that “should be banned”. Coskun also had a t-shirt with him on which was printed “The Koran should be banned”.

I asked Toby Young, the founder and director of the Free Speech Union (FSU), about the irony of the FSU part-funding the defence of a man who favours book-banning.

“If Hamit was campaigning to criminalise the publication of the Koran, I don’t think we would defend him,” he said. “I suppose we would defend Muslims’ right to make their case for imposing their blasphemy code on non-believers.”

“We don’t share those views,” he continued. “Tolerance involves tolerating intolerant views.”

In an ultimately unsuccessful motion to have the case stayed for abuse of process, Katy Thorne KC argued to the judge that “the Prosecution is seeking to introduce a law unknown to this land, namely blasphemy, specifically related to Islam”, and that the allegation of “hostility to a religion…used to be known as blasphemy”. “That fact of prosecuting,” she told the court, “is the misconduct we accuse the Crown of.”

Thorne accused the Prosecution of “chilling the right of citizens to criticise a religion” and “risking encouraging the violence of others against those who make those criticisms”.

She continued:

We say the principle is burning the Koran in public cannot be a criminal offence…abusing a religion or a religious book cannot be a criminal offence.

Thorne emphasised that “the words and conduct alleged against the Defendant does effectively seek to criminalise any public burning of any religious book, especially the Koran”, but Judge McGarva, in dismissing her motion for a stay, said plainly that he is “not seeking to reintroduce blasphemy”, only aiming to decide whether the Defendant went beyond “legitimate criticism”.

The question of how a determination of what criticism is “legitimate”, or how in essence that differs from blasphemy when it comes down to a matter of belief or taste, went unasked and certainly unanswered.

With the motion to have the case dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct set aside, the trial devolved, perhaps by design, into a word game, a lexical chess match.

Thorne told the judge that “the Prosecution has simply failed to produce evidence that what Mr Coskun did was disorderly.”

“What the other man did certainly was disorderly,” she said. “Mr Coskun cannot be guilty of the outrageous violent behaviour of another.”

The Prosecution’s proposal of the legal principle that a violent and disorderly reaction from another person attaches to the alleged instigator of the incident “undermines the rule of law in a dangerous way”, Thorne argued. “Many people would find Hamit Coskun’s views offensive but it’s trite to state that he has the right to hold those views.” Criminalising Coskun’s beliefs in the absence of violence would be a “disproportionate interference with his rights.”

“Mr Coskun is not being prosecuted for [being attacked],” said McGhee by way of rebuttal. “This defendant’s behaviour crossed the line,” he went on. “He chose to set fire to the Koran…held it aloft as it burned…a provocative act.”

“Why else do so if you don’t intend…disorder?” asked McGhee.

What about the man who came out, swore at Coskun, said he was “going to fucking kill” him, went back inside, emerged with a knife, and then proceeded to slash at him, chase him, kick him, spit on him, and swear at him on a public road? Isn’t that the disorder being referred to? Without the attack on him, Coskun was just a guy in a parka holding up a burning book and saying words, which the Prosecution went to great lengths to repeat are not crimes, even while prosecuting him criminally for it.

“The Defendant need not have been threatening or abusive to be disorderly,” McGhee said at one point, by way of clarification.

Despite asserting that Coskun was not on trial for being attacked, McGhee repeatedly referred to the attack on him as “public disorder” that his actions had “led to”, resting the Prosecution’s arguments on a logical fallacy whereby the alleged consequences of Coskun’s actions are used as evidence of his crime while claiming consistently that the crime he is charged with is not related to the attack on him, or to the explicitly-described-as-legal constituent elements of his behaviour.

While legal severally, when everything Coskun did is “taken together”, claimed McGhee, he becomes guilty of a public order offence, a transparently self-contradictory line of reasoning.

Thorne confirmed that Coskun would give evidence, and the court adjourned for a short break.

The Testimony

“I take it you’re going to make a non-religious promise?” Judge McGarva commented drily to Coskun as he took the stand to affirm, accompanied by a Turkish interpreter responsible for ensuring he understood everything he was asked and rendering his responses unchanged into English.

Coskun first answered questions from Katy Thorne KC about his life in Turkey before coming to England, and his views on Islam.

(Note: All quotes below are verbatim but condensed without ellipses for readability.)

I lived as a Marxist from age 17 to 37. I was imprisoned and detained all the time.

Today in Turkey they want to abolish the secular state and bring about a state based on sharia law.

I realised political Islam was changing the political scene of Turkey and since then I’ve been fighting it.

With the help of Qatar, they [the Turkish government] have been sponsoring terror groups. Leaders of Hamas have been to Turkey, have bank accounts in Turkey, have been entertained by the government. I’m criticising Al Qaeda, Hamas [for] killing people, attacking people. I mean the terrorists.

I criticise Islam not as a religion but as a part of a government’s political strategy. The terrorist groups I’ve mentioned have based their terror on what has been said or written in the Koran.

The person who attacked me with a knife was affected by the Koran. If he had burned the Bible, I don’t think he would have been attacked the way I was.

The groups I’m hostile to are radical Islamist terrorists, and to passages in the Koran that encourage terrorism.

“Why did you want to burn the Koran?” Thorne asked.

“Because of the passages the Koran contains,” he replied. “And I think it’s my right to criticise the Koran.”

The Cross-Examination

Philip McGhee (PM) cross-examined Coskun (HC), often while brandishing the evidence bag containing the fire-damaged Koran, the burning of which he had repeatedly told the court was not a crime.

What follows is presented verbatim, lightly edited for concision.

PM: You knew the Koran is held sacred by followers of Islam, didn’t you?

HC: Yes.

PM: Those passages you referred to are a minority, aren’t they?

HC: Seventy percent of the Koran is this negativity.

PM: You referred to fifty passages.

HC: Fifty plus.

PM: Somewhere between fifty passages and seventy percent of this book you object to, but not the rest of it? There are passages in this book, on your evidence, that peace-loving followers of Islam adhere to, aren’t there?

HC: Islamist terrorists act on the Koran.

PM: You said you knew the Koran was held sacred. You’re not seriously suggesting everyone who holds it sacred believes in terrorism? There are parts of it you don’t object to?

HC: There are passages and stories that don’t mean anything.

PM: Do we agree there are parts of that book you don’t object to?

HC: I find it meaningless, I just don’t criticise it.

PM: There are parts of this book that do not fall within your description of passages that encourage violence or terrorism?

HC: Yes.

PM: Yet you burnt all of that book, or that was your aim?

HC: Yes.

PM: You just wanted to burn the Koran full stop, didn’t you?

HC: Those passages in the Koran are enough for the Koran to be burnt as a whole book.

McGhee then recounted Coskun’s making of a video of himself burning another copy of the Koran at home, which he had posted to social media before the incident at the Turkish consulate.

PM: What happened when you posted the video of you burning the Koran [at home]?

HC: Some comments, some likes. Some negative, some positive.

PM: What were the negative comments?

HC: A video of terrorists beheading someone, saying “If we find you, we’ll chop your head off.”

PM: So you knew people would be upset? You had death threats for doing it at home and posting it online, you were aware this was a controversial thing to do in a public place, weren’t you?

McGhee then asks why, in the lead-up to the incident, Coskun had asked his supporters on social media to stay away rather than join him.

HC: I just wanted to protest at the Turkish consulate, I didn’t want to encourage a crowd or make a scene.

PM: What could a crowd end up doing?

HC: There was a risk of Islamist people attacking them.

PM: So you knew there was the possibility of disorder?

HC: I didn’t think about the possibility of public disorder. This is a democratic country.

PM: You knew you were risking people causing problems in public?

HC: That is the characteristic of Islamists.

Coskun’s public order offence was “risking people causing problems in public” because they might resort to violence when seeing someone doing something that is not illegal?

McGhee then pressed Coskun on his claim that he was enacting a political protest rather than wilfully insulting Muslims and their holy book by asking him why he didn’t tell the man attacking him with a knife that he was there to protest against the Turkish government, not to insult his religion.

PM: He was upset about you burning the Koran, wasn’t he?

HC: Yes.

PM: Why didn’t you say “This doesn’t concern you, I’m protesting the Turkish government”?

HC: In what language?

PM: You speak some English. You couldn’t have managed “Erdoğan help terrorists”?

HC: Because I didn’t say that, you think I deserve to be knifed and killed?

PM: You were called an “idiot” by that man and your response was “Fuck you”.

HC: It was him who was attacking me.

McGhee then finished off by challenging Coskun on his view of Muslims as a group as expressed during his protest and to police when they arrived on the scene and then arrested and questioned him.

PM: You said repeatedly to police “Fuck Islam”.

HC: I was injured, I was angry.

PM: At the scene, no mention of Erdoğan.

HC: I did on my Twitter [sic] account, I have said Islam is a religion of terror and I still say it.

PM: Whatever your views of the Turkish government, on the 13th of February all you could come out with were expletives about Islam. That’s because, whatever else your views might be, you were motivated by a hostility to the followers of Islam, isn’t it?

HC: I don’t accept that.

PM: For whatever reason, you have built up an animosity, an antipathy, to followers of Islam and it’s that that drove you to do what you did and say what you said outside the Turkish consulate, and what you’ve said since is trying to cover it up, isn’t it? You’re seeking to disguise your bigotry and hostility towards Islam beneath a veneer of someone who was there doing what you were doing and saying what you were saying because you had certain views of Turkey and its government. Do you accept that?

HC: I have no hostile position towards the believers of Islam. At the moment they are establishing sharia law in Turkey. If you call this hostile towards Islam, okay, I’m hostile towards Islam. I’m a Christian so I have no right to live, that is what Islam says.

PM: No further questions.

Summations

After a marathon first day, we reconvened on the second day to hear the summations from both sides. Judge McGarva had already said he would need to take his time on the decision, which would be delivered at another time.

Philip McGhee presented the final arguments for the prosecution, stating that Coskun “went to a deliberately chosen place” and “used disorderly behaviour”.

“Burning any book in a public place is contemptuous of its content, provocative, and taken as an attempt to suppress the content of that book,” McGhee told Judge McGarva. “There were disorderly consequences to this behaviour,” he continued. While Coskun “is not being prosecuted for the criminal actions of others”, a man who witnessed his actions “armed himself with a bladed article and attacked him.”

“As a matter of objective fact, this was disorderly behaviour.”

Reminding the judge that “there is no requirement that there be evidence of an actual person caused harassment, alarm, or distress,” McGhee surmised that “any member of the public concerned with keeping the peace and religious tolerance, especially followers of Islam, would be caused harassment, alarm, or distress” by Coskun’s actions.

“If it had to be distilled into a single thought,” McGhee said in closing, “the threat that [his actions] brought to public order” is what tipped Coskun’s behaviour into prosecutable territory, and the violence against him by two bystanders “is relevant evidence to that question.”

Katy Thorne KC disputed McGhee’s characterisation of events and the CPS’s interpretation of the law, telling the judge that they were “effectively running a circular argument”.

She told the court that “they are not suggesting Koran burning is a criminal offence, not suggesting [the shouting] is a criminal offence, but that [doing it] in a public place in daylight” makes it a crime.

“I think they’re saying the combination, the two things together,” Judge McGarva interjected, which McGhee affirmed.

“Two things together do not trespass into criminal territory,” Thorne continued. “They keep saying they’re not [crimes] but it keeps coming back to that…[it] keeps going round in circles.”

Thorne called out the prosecution for arguing that Coskun “being aware of the fact that extremists might react means he is aware his behaviour is disorderly” and cautioned that “one has to consider the criminal…reactions of others as unreasonable.”

She insisted that “you must never cause anyone to react to you” cannot be the substance of the Public Order Act.

“It’s his right to criticise the religion,” she said. “That right is sacrosanct. Nothing in the Public Order Act criminalises that act.”

Judge McGarva adjourned proceedings to prepare his decision.

The Verdict

“There is no statutory definition of disorderly,” Judge McGarva explained in his decision. “It has its every day meaning, it does not have to involve violent conduct.”

For someone charged with a public order offence, this is not a reassuring thing to hear.

It seems that “I know it when I see it,” as written by US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 regarding obscenity, is increasingly an acceptable legal standard in British law.

McGarva continued:

There was a real problem with the original charge which referred to Islam as if it were a person when it is not. I do not find that this prosecution is an attempt to bring back and expand blasphemy law. The facts of this case require consideration and a decision needs to be made as to whether the defendant’s conduct was simply him exercising his right to protest and freedom of speech or whether his behaviour crossed a line into criminal conduct.

“Criticism of Islam is not what the defendant is charged with, he is charged with disorderly behaviour,” the decision reads. “[I]t is clearly not an offence to criticise a religion. In this case the Court needs to decide whether this was just a criticism of religion or whether it was more.”

“The distinction the defendant draws between Islam and its followers is important,” McGarva wrote, but “[a] study of his interview with the police shows that it is hard to separate his views about the religion in general from his views about its followers.”

The judge found that “the defendant has a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers” and that “[i]t is not possible to separate his views about the religion from his views about its followers.”

A contrarian might suggest that it is especially difficult to separate those two views when some of the followers of the religion, the ones Coskun explicitly said he had an issue with, advocate for and carry out terrorist activities using their interpretation of that religion as justification. If a defining characteristic of a proscribed terrorist organisation is their religious doctrine, does the fact that the terrorists are followers of that doctrine make them a protected group when it comes to criticism? Coskun said under oath that he was criticising Islam because it is used by terrorists, not that he was criticising terrorists because they were Muslims. Would he be innocent if he had said he loves the terrorists, but hates their belief system?

The heart of the decision, the part that may haunt the halls of Britain’s courts for years to come, is laid out in plain but nonsensical English (emphasis mine).

Making criticism of Islam or the Quran is not necessarily disorderly. Burning a religious book although offensive to some is not necessarily disorderly. In this case the defendant positioned himself outside the Turkish embassy a place where he must have known there would be Muslims. The burning of the Quran was carried out in a very visible way, it being held up and him saying the “Quran is burning”, that is by its nature provocative. What made his conduct disorderly was the timing and location of the conduct and that all this was accompanied by abusive language. There was no need for him to use the “F” word and direct it towards Islam. His conduct was not violent or threatening but it was disorderly. He was repeatedly swearing both to the world in general and to the man who confronted him particularly. 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 2 different people [neither of whom appear to have any justification for the nature of their response].

Legal scholars and law students may be studying the last sentence in that paragraph for a generation or more.

If the two people who assaulted Coskun didn’t have “any justification for the nature of their response”, how can their unreasonable response speak to the disorderly nature of Coskun’s conduct? How can the madness of the unreasonable, if a matter of public awareness, be the fault of a reasonable people who ‘triggers’ it?

If I’m walking down the street eating an ice cream and an escaped mental patient attacks me with an iron bar because he thinks ice cream is a demonic substance that turns people into dangerous mutants, is eating ice cream disorderly? How about if that happens a few dozen times, and now ‘everyone’ knows that there are crazy people in society attacking anyone they see eating ice cream in public? Does knowing that eating ice cream might set someone off make doing it a public order offence because of the unreasonable violence that might result?

What kind of Wonderland logic is this?

“His behaviour was provocative and taunting…and clearly aimed at provoking others,” McGarva continued. “The prosecution must also prove the conduct was in the presence of someone likely to be caused harm or distress. This is clearly the case here; a man took exception to him burning his holy book and a passing delivery rider kicked him when he was on the floor.”

There it is again, the thing the prosecution said repeatedly wasn’t the case: Hamit Coskun is guilty because of the actions of other people, which the Court has determined to be the consequences of his own actions. The agency of others is apparently no longer a mitigating factor in these types of cases.

The decision gets worse:

Firstly, when he was interviewed, he stated that he was motivated by the murder of a man who burned the Quran in Sweden, so he knew such actions had provoked an extreme response elsewhere. Secondly, he had posted his own burning of the Quran on social media and received negative comments including threats on his own life. He accompanied the burning of the Quran with abusive language. It would have been easy for him to make his criticism of Islam in neutral language without the abuse.

Taste is now a determinant of whether or not speech is protected? Using no-no words rather than “neutral language” makes Coskun a criminal? Of course, it’s absurd to suggest, as the prosecution and judge have done, that if Coskun had just been silently burning a Koran on the street and, when approached by someone who was clearly angry, told them calmly that he was conducting a peaceful political protest against the influence of Islam on his home country and not seeking to insult or disparage Muslims as a group, the moment of tension would have passed.

The frequency with which those who “insult” Islam are violently attacked and even killed is not proof of how sensitive everyone needs to be, it’s proof that a society in which civil liberties and secular values are protected must draw a bright line between speech and expression on the one hand, and violence and harm on the other. The alternative is the slow strangulation of dissent, objection, protest, as well as ridicule, mockery, and rude language.

It is not possible, as Judge McGarva seems to believe he has done in his decision, to balance these interests because they are diametrically opposed. We either have a society in which religious people cope with mockery and transgression, or a society in which there is ultimately no separation between religious doctrine and civic authority.

“The defendant has raised evidence that his actions were a protest and that he was exercising his rights under the European Convention on Human Rights,” McGarva acknowledged. “His actions were accompanied by bad language in some cases directed towards the religion and which were motivated at least in part by a hatred of the followers of that religion. I am sure that in these circumstances his conduct [was] not reasonable.”

While accepting the necessity of a proportionality assessment in dealing with Coskun’s invocation of his rights under the ECHR, McGarva wrote that “[t]he aim of the Public Order Act is to prevent public disorder and to control public assemblies” and “[t]he aim of maintaining public order is clearly legitimate.” Therefore, the interference with Coskun’s rights under the ECHR is permissible.

The consequences of the defendant’s provocative behaviour were that serious public disorder did break out. The effect of criminalising his behaviour is not to punish him for their criminal acts and would not be an encouragement to others to respond in a similar way, the aim is to prevent it happening in the first place. The defendant’s conduct was highly provocative, he set fire to Quran at a location where he knew there would be Muslims and he knew similar conduct had provoked an extreme response both elsewhere and on his own social media. He accompanied his actions with a defiant statement that the “ Quran is burning” and “Islam is the religion of terrorism” and his behaviour escalated once he had been challenged with his repeatedly using the “f” word. The act of making this conduct an offence strikes the correct balance between the need to maintain good public order and allowing citizens to hold their own religious views where they want to express those views.

There it is. All of the things listed by the judge as contributing factors to the offence are, according to the prosecution’s own arguments and the repeated assertions by the judge to the contrary, not crimes. However, “taken together”, they constitute a criminal offence.

McGarva found Coskun guilty of the religiously aggravated public order offence while adjourning his decision on the simple offence “without an adjudication in case the defendant wishes to appeal to the Crown Court.”

As the offence he was charged with is not imprisonable, Coskun was fined £240 plus a 40% surcharge of £96 and released.

The National Secular Society and Free Speech Union are “actively considering” an appeal.

Reactions

Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society rejected the court’s claim that Coskun’s conviction “would not be an encouragement to others to respond in a similar way”:

The conviction of Mr. Coskun on the grounds that his actions were ‘likely’ to cause harassment, alarm, or distress suggests a troubling repurposing of public order laws as a proxy for blasphemy laws. This jeopardises freedom of expression by establishing a 'heckler’s veto' that incentivises violent responses to suppress views deemed offensive.

Toby Young of the Free Speech Union pointed out that while “religious tolerance is an important British value…[e]veryone 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.”

The Muslim Council of Britain and the Sharia Council were both approached for comment on the trial, as well as their perspective on how Islamic jurisprudence would apply to Coskun’s actions. They did not respond in time for publication.

Coda

In October 1993, then-Prince Charles gave a speech in which he commented on the perception of Islam as an incubator of extremism:

We must not be tempted to believe that extremism is in some way the hallmark and essence of the Muslim. Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity.

In 2006, during a visit to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt in the aftermath of the backlash against the Jyllands-Posten publication of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, he also reportedly said:

The true mark of a civilised society is the respect it pays to minorities and to strangers.

The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others.

The Crown Prosecution Service ultimately serves the Crown, which rests on the head of the monarch. The clue is in the name. The trial this article describes was called Rex (i.e. the King) v. Hamit Coskun. It seems that the principles Charles III has held for so long have filtered through into the system he rules over.

Yet again, a King Charles is overseeing a sea change in British civic life.

When he suggested in 2006 that we should “respect what is precious and sacred to others”, it’s a pity he didn’t seem to consider values like secularism, free thought, free speech, free expression, and fearless public debate to be precious. For some of us they are, and sacred too.

Despite the CPS’s protestations to the contrary, it is the sanctity of the Koran and the sensitivity of its believers that the law has decided to protect in this case, not public order. In so doing, those who would react to speech or expression with violence have been emboldened, and anyone who might feel driven to speak out publicly must think twice, not only about their personal safety but their criminal liability. A silent public square in which citizens are too cowed to express their thoughts and feelings is not an orderly one, it is an oppressive one.

The last two verses of the thirty-third sura of the Koran, Al Ahzab (The Allies), describe the fate that awaits “those who malign Allah and His messenger” or “who malign believing men and believing women undeservedly”.

Truly, if the Hypocrites, and those in whose hearts is a disease, and those who stir up sedition in the City, desist not, We shall certainly stir thee up against them:

Then will they not be able to stay in it as thy neighbours for any length of time:

They shall have a curse on them: whenever they are found, they shall be seized and slain (without mercy).

Koran 33.60-61