Blasphemy Never Left the UK, It Just Changed Clothes

England and Wales abolished the old blasphemy offences in 2008. The statute book looked adult for a while. Then the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and a string of magistrates rebuilt the offence without the embarrassing name. They used public-order law, "grossly offensive" communications, and religious aggravation. The sacred text that now draws the state's protection is not the Book of Common Prayer. FIRE asked the only question that matters: how many times can you prosecute blasphemous speech under other laws until you have a blasphemy law? Britain is answering in court.

Hamit Coskun, a Turkish-born Kurdish-Armenian, burned a Quran outside London's Turkish consulate in 2025 and shouted what every comedy club has shouted about bishops for fifty years. A man came at him with a knife, then kicked and spat. A passing cyclist joined in. Coskun was the one charged with a religiously aggravated public-order offence. District Judge John McGarva found his conduct "disorderly," and offered a sentence that should be taught in every civics class as a warning: the disorder was "no better illustrated" than by the fact that two people assaulted him. The violence was treated as proof of the victim's guilt. The man with the knife received a suspended sentence. Offence, in that courtroom, mitigated the stabbing and incriminated the speech.

Coskun eventually won on appeal. Southwark Crown Court said a right worth having must include views that offend, shock or disturb. The Director of Public Prosecutions tried again at the High Court and failed. Campaigners called it a victory. It was a receipt. He had already been arrested, charged, convicted, fined, dragged through appeal, and dragged again. The CPS, while denying it was enforcing blasphemy, made clear it would keep bringing cases of this kind. Process is the punishment. The next person with a lighter does the maths before the match is struck.

That is how a repealed law returns. Not as "Thou shalt not take the name of Allah in vain," but as "your protest caused alarm," with the alarm measured by whoever is willing to swing.

The Coskun farce would be a one-off if the rest of the machine had stayed idle. It has not. Stephen Gray, a retired officer, reposted two Facebook images. A judge decided a joke about hotels and deportation was politics, therefore not "grossly offensive." A bacon meme aimed at Islamic rules on food and marriage was religion, therefore a Communications Act offence. More than a thousand pounds in fines and costs. He is appealing because a conviction can interfere with the family's fostering. A neighbour who was not even Muslim made the complaint after an unrelated row. The state still sat in judgment on whether a joke about a religion was too rude for a grown country.

In May 2026 two people at a London rally held signs that read "f**k Islam." They were arrested. The Public Order Act is the hook. The Free Speech Union and Big Brother Watch have asked prosecutors to drop it. The words are ugly. They are also the ordinary register of British protest against churches, parties, and the monarchy. Apply that register to one faith and the uniform arrives. Apply it to another and you get a column in the Guardian and a grant.

South Wales Police had to pause guidance that would have logged "illegitimate" criticism of Islam as hostility. Lord Young's line was the right one: blasphemy was repealed eighteen years ago, and the work now is stopping it coming in the back door. A government "anti-Muslim hostility" definition and a special representative sit in the same grey zone, non-statutory on paper, a chilling memo in practice, while officials insist criticism of doctrine remains lawful. The reassurance is always in the footnote. The arrest is in the street.

A free country mocks gods. It has mocked Christ on Channel 4 until the joke went stale. It has put nuns in sitcoms and the Pope on T-shirts. The asymmetry is the story. The faith that can produce a crowd, a knife, a campaign of letters, and a police risk assessment is the faith the state learns to wrap in cotton. That is not theology. It is incentive.

Prosecutors say they are not protecting a religion. They are protecting "people likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress," sometimes "motivated by hostility towards a religious group." The trick is the collapse of the category. Islam the doctrine, Muslims the citizens, and "the community" that will make trouble become one object. Burn a book and you have not argued with an idea. You have "targeted a group." The heckler does not veto the speech after the fact. He is built into the offence. If they attack you, you were disorderly. If they might attack you, you were reckless. Either way the peaceful party is the one who must shut up.

Call that community cohesion if you like. It is the oldest protection racket in politics: the party that threatens disorder is treated as a weather system, and the party that speaks is treated as the climate criminal.

Blasphemy laws do not exist to stop knives. Knives are already illegal. They exist to tell the public which opinions are too expensive. Britain no longer has the honesty to write "Islam" into the Act. It has Section 127, Section 5, religious aggravation, and a police culture that would rather log a meme than explain to a crowd why a sign is legal.

The official line will remain that there is no blasphemy law. Official lines are for press releases. On the ground there is a two-tier sacredness. One tradition may be ripped apart in every seminar and late-night show. Another may be insulted only if you are prepared to be filmed, charged, and told that the man who ran at you with a blade has demonstrated your guilt.

A nation that repealed blasphemy because it had grown up does not need to grow a new one for the faith it is afraid of. It needs courts that treat assault as the crime and offence as the weather. Until that happens, FIRE's question is not a provocation. It is a description. Britain brought the law back. It just declined to put the old word on the charge sheet.

https://www.fire.org/news/blogs/free-speech-dispatch/britain-bringing-blasphemy-laws-back-under-another-name