Coskun Case: Britain's Struggle with Blasphemy Laws

Burning Pages, Binding Consciences: The Coskun Case and Britain’s Quiet Return to Blasphemy Law

When the Crown Court overturned the conviction of Hamit Coskun in October 2025, it did more than correct a lower-court error. It exposed the deeper metaphysical confusion of a nation that abolished its blasphemy laws with one hand while attempting to resurrect them with the other. At stake was not simply a protester’s right to perform an act most Christians would regard as imprudent and morally objectionable, but the more fundamental question of whether the British state may once again preside over the policing of religious offence.

Coskun, who burned a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London in early 2025, was originally convicted of a “religiously aggravated” public order offence. The lower court accepted that his act caused “harassment, alarm or distress” to Muslim bystanders and therefore satisfied the requirements of a religiously aggravated offence under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Yet this interpretation blurred the very distinction Parliament sought to establish when it abolished the common-law offence of blasphemy in 2008: the difference between protecting individuals from harm and protecting ideas from criticism.

The Crown Court’s ruling, delivered by His Honour Judge Joel Bennathan KC, restored that distinction with admirable clarity. Offence—however deep—does not constitute criminal harm, and the state may not enforce reverence for a religious text without trespassing upon freedoms long recognised as essential to a liberal and democratic society. As The Guardian reported, the judge affirmed that there is “no longer any such offence as blasphemy in English law” and that the right to free expression must encompass speech which “offends, shocks or disturbs”1.

Yet the case cannot be confined to its legal facts. It is a signpost of the cultural contradictions that now govern British public life.

The Moral Distinction: Charity Without Censorship
A Christian analysis must begin with a frank moral recognition. Book-burning—whether of the Quran, the Bible, or any other sacred text—is not an action compatible with charity, humility, or the dignity owed to one’s neighbour. Christians have no interest in defending the symbolic destruction of what others hold sacred. Such acts inflame passions without illuminating truth; they scandalise without edifying.

But Christian moral teaching also insists that vice does not justify tyranny. A discourteous act does not grant the state licence to contrive new forms of doctrinal protectionism. The early Church never sought the suppression of pagan rites; it pursued conversion through preaching, argument, and martyrdom. Christianity’s triumph was not built upon criminalising error but upon the unimpeded proclamation of truth. As St Justin Martyr wrote in his First Apology, the Christian appeals “to reason and to truth, not to compulsion”2.

It is therefore essential to distinguish between moral criticism of Coskun’s conduct—wholly legitimate—and legal condemnation of it, which risks collapsing the difference between public order and religious privilege.

The Legal Confusion: When Public Order Masks Doctrine
Coskun’s initial conviction rested on the idea that a religious text is an extension of the believer’s identity, such that insulting the text constitutes an attack on the person. This conceptual slippage has appeared in other European jurisdictions. In Denmark, before its 2023 reinstatement of a “burning ban,” blasphemy prosecutions had declined, but the underlying logic persisted3. In Scotland, the 2021 Hate Crime Act generated public concern that criticism of religious doctrines might be treated as “stirring up hatred”4. Across Europe, pressures mount to curtail speech deemed offensive to religious communities, particularly where social tensions already run high.

But British law has traditionally resisted such confusions. The Law Commission, in its major 2014 review, warned repeatedly that criminal law must not be used to shield beliefs from criticism or satire, stressing that “the criminal law should not prohibit speech because it causes offence”5. The European Court of Human Rights has issued similar cautions, holding that freedom of expression applies equally to “ideas that offend, shock or disturb”6. Even Parliament’s own debates during the abolition of blasphemy in 2008 insisted that the end of the offence should guarantee that religious doctrines remain open to public challenge and even ridicule7.

Yet Coskun’s prosecution suggests that public authorities have tacitly embraced a new orthodoxy: that certain religious communities must be protected from emotional disturbance at the cost of everyone else’s liberty. This marks a profound departure from both English legal tradition and liberal democratic principle.

The Cultural Crisis: A Nation Without a Religious Centre
What the Coskun case truly exposes is less a legal failing than a civilisational one. Britain no longer possesses the shared moral and metaphysical grammar that once guided its handling of religious conflict. The Christian heritage that shaped its legal philosophy—affirming that persons, not doctrines, possess rights; that conscience, not coercion, binds; and that truth, not sentiment, should govern public life—has been largely abandoned. In its place stands a fragile ethic of offence-avoidance.

This vacuum breeds instability. Without a coherent understanding of the sacred, the state is pushed to adjudicate between competing claims of religious honour. When Christianity dominated Britain’s public imagination, the rules were clear: blasphemy protected only the established religion. Once that framework collapsed, Parliament correctly abolished blasphemy altogether. But in the absence of a common moral centre, cultural unease now presses the state to protect the symbols of whichever religious community appears most vulnerable—or most volatile.

Thus criticism of Christianity remains permissible, even fashionable, while criticism of other religions is increasingly treated as a public-order risk. Courts and police find themselves enforcing not equal protection but selective reverence.

The Theological Implications: Truth Without Fear
From a traditional Catholic standpoint, the stakes extend far beyond free speech. The Gospel is addressed to reason and conscience; it cannot be proclaimed in a climate where religious ideas are deemed too fragile for scrutiny. Islam, like Christianity, proposes universal claims about God, salvation, moral authority, and the destiny of the human person. Such claims require public engagement.

Christians must therefore defend even the offensive speech of those they disagree with, not because the speech is good, but because the alternative is worse: a public square in which truth is subordinate to sentiment, and evangelisation is constrained by threat of prosecution. As St John Henry Newman observed, “Truth is the object of the intellect; it is to be sought for its own sake”8. A society that cannot tolerate its pursuit—however turbulent—cannot sustain genuine religious liberty.

The irony is that Christianity itself has endured centuries of mockery, ridicule, and desecration without demanding legal protection against offence. Its Founder was mocked, scourged, and crucified. Its martyrs died praising their persecutors. It is therefore precisely because Christians deplore Coskun’s act that they must insist upon his right to perform it without the state’s punitive intervention. Charity cannot be imposed by statute; reverence cannot be commanded by law.

A Moment of Decision
The Crown Court’s decision marks a temporary restoration of constitutional sanity. But the forces that produced the original conviction remain active: cultural insecurity, legal ambiguity, and political fear. The CPS has signalled interest in further review. Advocacy groups continue to push for stronger protections against “religious offence.” And many public officials—lacking a coherent philosophical foundation—gravitate instinctively toward suppressing tension rather than defending principle.

Britain now stands at a crossroads. It may reaffirm the abolition of blasphemy and embrace the hard discipline of free expression. Or it may drift quietly into a new regime of unofficial sacredness, where certain doctrines are beyond criticism, and the state is compelled to administer reverence on behalf of select communities.

The Coskun case reminds us that law is not enough. A nation requires a moral centre. Britain once possessed one. Whether it can rediscover it will determine whether its future belongs to the rule of law—or the rule of offence.

The Guardian, “Man fined for burning Quran in London wins appeal against conviction,” 10 October 2025.
St Justin Martyr, First Apology, c. A.D. 155, ch. 12. Public domain.
BBC News, “Denmark to ban burning of Quran and other religious texts,” 25 August 2023.
Scottish Government, Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021: Explanatory Notes, 2021.
Law Commission, Hate Crime: Should the Current Offences Be Extended? (Law Com No. 348), 2014.
European Court of Human Rights, Handyside v. United Kingdom, Judgment of 7 December 1976, §49.
UK Parliament, House of Lords Hansard, 5 March 2008, debates on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill (Abolition of Blasphemy).
John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 1870, ch. 2.

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