I had hoped I would never have to write about Hamit Coskun again. After the Quran-burner won his appeal in October, it seemed that this particular battle in the free speech wars was over. Unfortunately the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have other ideas. On Friday evening the state prosecutor announced that it was going to appeal Coskun’s successful appeal. The language in their appeal application is particularly revealing.
In that document the CPS describes burning a Quran as ‘an obviously provocative act’, which is ‘highly controversial’ and ‘has led to widespread international protests and condemnation, particularly from Muslim communities and governments, and has provoked numerous well-documented incidents of disorder and violence’. This is similar to the arguments they made at Hamit’s original trial. The fact that Moussa Kadri went into his home, returned with a knife and slashed at Hamit with it was held up as evidence of how provocative the Quran burning must have been.
Those civil servants who are trying to subvert law and justice are a threat to us all
In an even more disturbing part of the CPS appeal application, they describe burning a Quran as ‘an act of desecration’, and are concerned that Coskun’s case ‘will undoubtedly be relied upon in future public order cases involving inflammatory acts of desecration’. Put simply, they want to be able to continue to prosecute and convict anyone whose actions violate Islamic blasphemy codes.
The mask is off now. In the world of the CPS, violence committed by unstable Muslims who can’t bear the sight of a book being burned is proof that those books shouldn’t be burned. Even worse, they are speaking the language of Islamic blasphemy codes, trying to introduce the idea that burning a book is an ‘act of desecration’ simply because Muslims believe it to be so.
The CPS, of course, have form in this regard. In the spring, the state’s lawyers tried to invent a law when they charged Coskun with an offence ‘against the religious institution of Islam’. This is a nonsense as under the Public Order Act only actual people can be victims. When the CPS were confronted on this they claimed it was an innocent mistake.
Ever since I have been attempting to use the Freedom of Information Act to discover how many other charges have been laid for offending ‘the religious institution of Islam’. The organisation has thus far rejected these efforts, claiming it would be too time-consuming to find all such records.
While the CPS have told me they recognise ‘there is no law to prosecute people for blasphemy’, and that ‘burning a religious text on its own is not a criminal act’, it is clear from the prosecutor’s behaviour that they are desperate to introduce a backdoor Islamic blasphemy law in England. If they succeed the consequences will be chilling, and could even be deadly.
Toby Young, Director of the Free Speech Union told me that
‘If the acquittal is overturned, it will send a message to religious fanatics 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 a religiously aggravated public order offence.’
Toby is right. What the CPS are doing is dangerous and sinister. They need to come clean on who within the organisation is so determined to create Islamic blasphemy laws in England. Those civil servants who are trying to subvert law and justice are a threat to us all. As Mr Justice Bennathan made clear at Hamit’s appeal in October ‘there is no offence of blasphemy in our law’.
The people responsible for this insidious subversion need to be removed from their jobs, and should be investigated by the police in order to establish whether they have committed misconduct in public office. The CPS also needs to come clean on how many other prosecutions like Hamit’s have gone unnoticed. How many unlawful convictions have there already been for offending ‘the religious institution of Islam’?
We need the truth, and we need this blasphemy code crushed.
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