I Burned a Quran. The British Government Punished Me for Blasphemy.

From the Free Press, originally published in The Spectator. Hat tip, Phyllis Chesler, thank you.

After my protest against Islamic extremism landed me with criminal charges, the verdict is in: It is now illegal to criticize Islam in Britain.

My name is Hamit Coskun, and I’ve just been convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offense. My “crime”? Burning a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London. Moments later, I was attacked by a man in full view of the street. I was hospitalized. Then I was arrested.

Some may say that book burning is a poor substitute for reasoned debate. I would counter that it was a symbolic, nonviolent form of expression intended to draw attention to the ongoing move from the secularism of my country of birth to a regime that embraces hard-line Islam.

That act of expression constituted political protest, and the law, as I understood it, was on my side. Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidance makes clear that legitimate protest can be offensive—and on occasion must be—if it is to be effective. In that spirit, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects not just polite expression but expression that offends, shocks, or disturbs. Political expression, above all, is meant to enjoy the strongest protection.

Alas, the judge ruled otherwise. And the reasoning deployed to convict me raises troubling questions about whether Britain is witnessing the quiet return of blasphemy laws.

Although the man who assaulted me is being prosecuted separately, the Crown says his action helped to prove my guilt. It argued that because I was attacked, my behavior must not have been peaceful. Under this logic, “disorderly” no longer depends on conduct, but on how offended or aggressive someone else chooses to be in response.

The judge in the case accepted the prosecution’s argument, concluding that my actions were “motivated at least in part by hatred of followers of the religion.”

This lies at the heart of the matter, and is key to the danger of the precedent set. If every protest against Islam is presumed to be a protest against Muslims, if criticism of doctrine is redefined as hatred of believers, then space for lawful criticism of that religion—or any religion—collapses. My case turned on that blurring of categories.

Why did the judge reject my stated motive of criticizing political Islam, rather than all Muslims? Because he accepted the prosecution’s argument that I hadn’t shouted Erdoğan often enough while the first of two assailants physically attacked me outside the consulate. At what point, exactly, would the Crown Prosecution Service have preferred me to launch into an explanation of the slow erosion of Kemalist secularism in the republic founded by Atatürk? While the second assailant was chasing me? Spitting at me? Or while he was kicking me as I lay on the ground?

Let me explain what I would have said to my attackers, if I’d had more time and less adrenaline.

There was a period when Turkey was secular. Imperfectly, yes, but enough to allow people like my parents to live with some dignity. My mother, whose grandmother was killed during the 1915 deportations from the eastern provinces, was Armenian. My father was Kurdish. Neither was religious, and I was raised to think freely and to question authority. For a while, that was possible.

Islam was present, of course—it always is in Turkey—but it remained largely in the background. For secular families like mine, it was still possible to believe in the republic’s founding ideals.

As a young man, I joined the People’s Labour Party (PLP), a legal, left-wing party committed to democratic reform. In 1993, I was arrested for being a member and tortured while in detention. More than a thousand others were swept up in the same wave of repression. My brother, who was also politically outspoken, was murdered in 1997 for his activism. When I was eventually released from prison in 2002, I continued to speak out, though it felt like only a dwindling few still had the courage to do so. I left the PLP, disillusioned by its refusal to confront political Islam.

By the mid-1990s, the Welfare Party had risen to power on an overtly Islamist platform . . . a young, charismatic mayor of Istanbul named Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was already laying the foundations for something far more enduring. Even before the electoral triumph of Erdoğan’s AKP in 2002, the old, secular order was under strain from a rising religious conservatism rooted in the provinces and rural heartlands.

The Turkey I had grown up in was disappearing. Erdoğan’s rise to power brought with it a new political theology. Islamist groups were tolerated, even encouraged. The education system was transformed: science and evolution pushed aside, religious dogma promoted, children funneled into Quran schools and religious orders.

I saw reports of senior figures from Hamas visiting Turkey, welcomed, protected, housed in government buildings. Police officers no longer served the law, but the faith. I was detained again, and a plainclothes officer told me that if I returned to prison, I would not come out alive. There was something about the way he put a gun to my head as he spoke that made me believe him.

After that, the decision to claim asylum in Britain made itself. Why the UK? Because I believed it was a country where an atheist refugee could speak without fear. That belief brought me to the gates of the Turkish consulate on February 13.

Had I known that challenging the Islamist propaganda that destroyed the country I grew up in could lead to prosecution, I might have thought twice about coming to Britain. But I am here now. And I will not remain silent.

The Free Speech Union funded my defense and stands ready to provide any assistance needed to get this judgment overturned. Because this is no longer just about me. It is about whether Britain still believes that no religion is beyond criticism, especially when it shapes public life and political power. That was the principle I was imprisoned for defending in Turkey, and it was the principle I was defending outside the Turkish consulate. I have no intention of abandoning that fight.