12.06.2025

Turning back the clock

No-one has the right not to be offended. The conviction of Hamit Coskun for burning the Koran is to revive the blasphemy laws by the back door. Not something the left should support, writes Eddie Ford

Free speech is fundamental to Marxism, as socialism can only be an act of self-liberation - of the great majority for the great majority - and members of the working class cannot be treated as little children, who are incapable of handling awkward and complicated questions. Therefore a recent case has disturbing implications for free speech, as it seems to represent blasphemy laws by proxy.

Hamit Coskun, 50, who was born in Turkey and is half Kurdish and half Armenian, set fire to a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London in February. He is an atheist with a long history of protesting against the Turkish government, saying his demonstration was a protest against president Erdoğan for turning Turkey into a “base for radical Islamists”. He was heard shouting things like “Fuck Islam!”, “Islam is religion of terrorism”, “The Koran is burning”, etc. Not so widely reported was the fact that a passerby allegedly attacked Coskun and appeared to slash at him with a blade - then began kicking him when he fell to the ground. The man, who was apparently a Muslim, admitting that he assaulted Coskun, though he has denied using a knife in the attack. Since the protest, Coskun has reportedly faced death threats and has actually gone into hiding.

However, he was found guilty on June 2 of an offence under section 5 of the Public Order Act, which criminalises behaving or using words in a “disorderly” manner, or displaying material that is likely to harass, intimidate or distress others - which, of course, has been cynically deployed recently to warn Palestine protestors not to go anywhere near synagogues, for example. He was also found guilty under section 31(1) c) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which means that a public order offence can be “religiously aggravated” - which is a vicious attack on freedom of speech and the right to be offensive (or angular) in your criticism.¹ The National Secular Society and the Free Speech Union, who have paid Coskun’s legal fees, will also pay his fine - which is £240 plus a £96 surcharge - and they are also considering appealing against the verdict.

The presiding judge perversely claimed that Coskun knew that burning a copy of the Koran would be “provocative”, because in January Iraqi refugee Salwan Momika was assassinated in Sweden for doing the same thing. However, as Coskun was attacked, that rather seemed to prove his essential point about political Islamism - a fact which eluded the professional brains at the Crown Prosecution Service.² Coskun was originally charged with intent to cause “harassment, alarm or distress” against “the religious institution of Islam”, but, following an intervention by the NSS, the CPS retreated and said the wording of the charge was “incorrectly applied” and substituted a new charge. But the NSS correctly stated that any conviction based on the facts of this case would suggest “the reinstatement of an offence of blasphemy in English law by the back door”.

At this point, we should remember that the last successful prosecution for blasphemy was brought by the odious Mary Whitehouse in 1977 for James Kirkup’s poem, ‘The love that dares to speak its name’ - which was published in the June 3 1976 issue of Gay News. This was not a particularly good poem, at least in the opinion of this author, but it fairly graphically described Jesus having sex with numerous disciples, guards, Pontius Pilate, etc. The jury delivered a guilty verdict with Gay News Ltd being fined £1,000 and its editor, Denis Lemon, fined £500 and sentenced to nine months suspended imprisonment. The last attempted prosecution under the blasphemy laws was in 2007 - when the evangelical group, Christian Voice, sought a private prosecution against the BBC over its broadcasting of the show, Jerry Springer: the opera, which includes a scene depicting Jesus, dressed as a baby, professing to be “a bit gay”.

Abolition

Blasphemy was eventually abolished as a common law offence in England and Wales in 2008, Scotland in 2021 (and the Republic of Ireland formally abolished its blasphemy laws in 2020, following a referendum). That leaves Northern Ireland as the only part of the UK that still has blasphemy laws - so, for instance, in 2014 Newtownabbey Borough Council banned a play about the Bible on the grounds that it was “blasphemous”.

Unfortunately, there are those who want to resurrect blasphemy, especially in the guise of combating Islamophobia and racism. Last year, Labour MP Tahir Ali (a supporter of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, by the way) monstrously asked Keir Starmer to “commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and prophets of the Abrahamic religions” - in effect calling for turning the clock backwards and smuggling in blasphemy laws. Indeed, some like Ali would like them extended beyond Christianity - at the moment the Church of England is the state religion, but presumably the likes of Ali want the monarch to become the defender of faiths, with an inferior place for those of no faith or who are positively atheist.

What needs to be noted is that Starmer neither rejected the proposal nor mentioned any specific response - something which the NSS and others called “deeply alarming”, as he did not reject it on principle.³ Although the charge against Coskun of attacking “the religious institution of Islam” was not pursued, the court’s eventual ruling is effectively the same and could have a chilling effect on anyone who wants to protest vociferously against any religion.

This takes us back to Tony Blair. because he too, like Ali, wanted to court Islamic opinion - hence his Religious Hatred Act of 2006, which was an attempt to recover lost ground after ‘the war on terror’. Though, of course, he first attempted to pass religious hatred legislation in 2001 following the September 11 attacks, with his then home secretary, David Blunkett, shamelessly declaring that laws were urgently needed in order to crack down upon a rash of vandalism inflicted to Muslim properties and assaults - both verbal and physical - upon ordinary Muslims. But, while the Commons was an easy pushover, the House of Lords inflicted two defeats on the legislation, and the same again in 2005. Nor was it third time lucky for Blair after his sweeping election victory in 2006 - he was still facing determined opposition from the Lords.

There was also stubborn resistance by secularists - particularly comedians like the Irish comic Dave Allen and Rowan Atkinson of Not the nine o’clock news fame (and later Mr Bean). They protested against the very real danger of being prosecuted for making ‘offensive’ jokes about religion and the legislation was steadily amended, as the facts on the ground became apparent. With a certain amount of logic, the ‘holy books’ themselves had to be excluded from the legislation: otherwise a preacher might find themselves in the same situation - if you want to justify homophobia, misogyny, anti-Semitism or genocide, just for starters, you will find plenty of material in the Old Testament’s Joshua, Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the New Testament’s Matthew and John - or the Koran.

That would clearly be an unacceptable situation to the establishment, which obviously wants to install in us respect for the authority of religion so we know our place in society. In the end, the only opposition party that was supporting Blair’s bill was Respect in the shape of its lone MP, George Galloway, who had no problems traipsing through the division lobby with his supposed nemesis, New Labour.

Blair and his minions, getting desperate to preserve their act, had a cunning plan - simply to add ‘or religious’ after ‘racial’ in the existing law, which would then have penalised the use of “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”. But that was shot down again by the Lords, which passed two amendments that essentially removed the ‘abusive’ and ‘insulting’ concept, and required the intention - not just the possibility - of stirring up religious hatred.

This was much to Galloway’s disgust, who claimed that the two successful amendments rendered the legislation “completely useless”, as “only cases of direct threats will even be considered for prosecution” - which was “an insult” to the Muslim community, “who face bigotry because of their religion and who only want the law to treat them in the same way as those who face racial discrimination”. Now, if words, actions, images, etc are considered “threatening”, not merely “abusive” or “insulting”, to followers of a particular religion or belief system, they are deemed to be against the law. Of course, in the real world, “abusive” words are frequently perceived as “threatening”.

Blair’s government, it goes without saying, attempted to overturn these changes, but lost again. Nevertheless, the religious hatred laws were a further consolidation of the culture of offence and, as we all know, religious people in the past went to extraordinary lengths to ban or repress anything that they considered immoral, salacious or irreligious. Apart from religious wars and inquisitions, people of a certain age will never forget the campaign against the ‘blasphemous’ The life of Brian by Monty Python, with those like Mary Whitehouse doing everything they could to get it suppressed.

Provocative

But talk of Galloway reminds us of what is truly significant about the religious hatred legislation, which is not so much about the act itself - which has never been used against anyone so far, but the left’s disgraceful response to it. Shamefully, the Socialist Workers Party supported the 2006 legislation, as it was alongside George Galloway in an unprincipled alliance - an unpopular front, to coin a phrase. The SWP too only saw it in terms of religious intolerance and racism. That is, something that Muslims are vulnerable to, hence we can possibly recruit from among them (never mind the broader democratic issues).

We were invited to believe that there is a big difference between ridiculing a religion, such as the establishment-backed Church of England, which is totally legitimate, and mocking the beliefs of the poor and oppressed - apparently Islam is above analytical criticism, sceptical questioning, let alone biting humour, and can never be the belief of the rich and powerful. That is profound ignorance, as religions are almost always cross-class phenomena. Regardless, Alex Callinicos sneakily said we should not “allow ourselves to be fooled by arguments about freedom of speech”, lining up with pro-establishment Muslims, who were asking the state to ban anything that causes them offence (Socialist Worker February 23 2006) - as Hamit Coskun will surely tell you. The SWP’s front organisation, Stand Up to Racism, has in the past issued propaganda saying “insulting the Prophet Mohammed is not freedom of speech: it is racist abuse” (original spelling).⁴ That is utter garbage and led you to think that the SWP wanted to revive and extend the blasphemy laws - perhaps those who show a picture or cartoon of Muhammad should be imprisoned or stoned to death?

Speech limits

In other words, you can only conclude that for these comrades freedom of speech must have definite limits - one of those being when it becomes allegedly a ‘cloak’ for racism or Islamophobia. In this way, the SWP and others on the left sowed illusions in the supposed neutrality of the state, which has to be persuaded to take the necessary powers to stop insults or offence to Islam. But you can be as sure as chips that laws such as the Religious Hatred Act would not be used to protect vulnerable minorities, but to further silence and scapegoat them - divide the working class into competing sects and groups.

Unlike the SWP, Marxists do not regard free speech as an abstract concept or an add-on extra. If socialism is ever to be realised, the overwhelming majority of the population has to master complex truths. The corollary of that is nothing is ever taboo and no-one has a right not to be offended, however deep their belief or faith. However, what spontaneously dominates under the current order are the ideas of the bourgeoisie and, therefore, the only way that Marxism can triumph over what is dominant, apologetic, absurd, diversionary and irrational is through an unrestricted fight over ideas. A class struggle that is necessarily conducted in the public eye, where everyone can gain a firm understanding, freely engage and eventually take sides.

Winning that battle for hearts and minds is why the Marxist left has historically advocated and defended free expression. As Rosa Luxemburg famously said, “freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently”, no matter how provocatively expressed their thoughts are.