If the Turkish man on trial for burning a copy of the Quran loses his case on Tuesday, the Trump administration is preparing to offer him political asylum in the United States.
According to the Telegraph, State Department officials are already making plans to help him leave the country. Let that sink in. A man who came to Britain as a refugee — fleeing the Islamic terrorism that, as he puts it, destroyed his family’s life in Turkey — may soon have to flee Britain itself and seek asylum in America because we cannot protect his human rights. I cannot think of anything more embarrassing for Sir Keir Starmer.
So what's this case about? On 13 February last year, Hamit Coskun — a Turkish-born atheist of Armenian-Kurdish descent — travelled to the Turkish consulate in Knightsbridge and set fire to a Koran as a political protest against what he considers the Islamification of his homeland.
A passer-by, Moussa Kadri, attacked him with a knife before kicking him to the ground. Kadri received nothing more than a suspended sentence, but Coskun was convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence — another name for blasphemy, an offence Parliament abolished eighteen years ago.
The Free Speech Union, which I run, and the National Secular Society took up his cause. At Southwark Crown Court in October, his conviction was overturned.
Mr Justice Bennathan ruled that while burning a Koran might be something many Muslims find deeply upsetting, the right to freedom of expression must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.
But the Crown Prosecution Service, which originally charged Coskun with causing "harassment, alarm or distress" to "the religious institution of Islam", is now appealing to the High Court to get that acquittal overturned. The hearing is tomorrow.
Consider the logic of what the CPS is arguing. Coskun burned a book. He was violently attacked for doing so. And the state’s position is that the man who burned the book is the criminal, not — or not only — the man who attacked him with a knife.
Britain could be living under an Islamic blasphemy law in 24 hours. This is how free speech dies - Toby Young | Getty Images
If the CPS succeeds, it will establish a chilling principle: that breaking an Islamic blasphemy code — whether by burning a Koran or showing schoolchildren cartoons of Mohammed — will become a religiously aggravated public order offence, provided the blasphemer is violently attacked by a Muslim fanatic.
You’ve heard of the heckler’s veto. This would create a stabber’s veto. It would sound the death knell for free speech in Britain.
No wonder the White House is paying attention. Earlier this year, Sarah Rogers, the under-secretary of state for public diplomacy, told The Telegraph that Britons prosecuted over their speech may apply for refugee protection in America.
When JD Vance stood up at the Munich Security Conference and declared that free speech in Britain was “in retreat”, Downing Street bristled.
But if a political dissident ends up claiming asylum from the UK in the United States on human rights grounds, what possible rebuttal is there?
For Sir Keir Starmer, this should be mortifying. Here is a Prime Minister who spent years as Director of Public Prosecutions, who never tires of burnishing his human rights credentials, and who stood beside President Trump at a joint press conference at Chequers and declared that free speech is “one of the founding values of the United Kingdom”, which his government protects “jealously and fiercely”. If Hamit Coskun ends up on a plane to Washington, those words will ring hollow. So much for Mr Human Rights.
The FSU and the National Secular Society are jointly funding Coskun’s legal defence because this case is about far more than one man and one Koran.
It is about whether the criminal law can be used to enforce a de facto Islamic blasphemy code. It is about whether violent thugs get a veto over what the rest of us are permitted to say, write, draw, or burn.
And it is about whether Britain remains the kind of country in which political dissidents from tyrannical regimes can seek refuge — or the kind from which they flee.
To contribute to Hamit Coskun’s legal defence, please visit here.
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