“Fuck Islam.”
That is not an illegal statement.
The British High Court effectively confirmed as much as recently as February this year. Yet just a few months later, two protesters were arrested by British police for displaying signs bearing those very words: “Fuck Islam”. The case joins a growing number of British cases that raise an increasingly pressing question: Are blasphemy laws returning to Britain – not through Parliament, but through the practices of the police and prosecutors?
He Insulted Islam – and Was Attacked
England and Wales abolished their blasphemy laws in 2008. Yet in 2025, Turkish-born atheist Hamit Coskun was convicted of a religiously aggravated offence under the Public Order Act after burning a Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London while shouting, among other things, “Fuck Islam” and “Islam is the religion of terrorism”. Coskun told police that his protest was directed at Islam and at his native Turkey’s drift away from secularism – not at Muslims as people.
While Coskun was burning his Quran, a man emerged from a nearby building, threatened to kill him, fetched a knife and chased him into the road. Coskun was also kicked and spat at.
When the police arrived, they arrested not only his attacker but Coskun as well, thereby providing an almost textbook example of what a growing number of Britons describe as “two-tier policing”, and which has contributed to Britain’s crisis of legitimacy: one man makes a lawful statement, the other responds with threats, violence and a knife – and the police put both of them in handcuffs.
Coskun was initially convicted over the Quran burning, but was subsequently acquitted by the Crown Court. When prosecutors sought to have the acquittal overturned, they lost in the High Court in February this year. The court upheld the fundamental principle: England and Wales have no offence of blasphemy. Freedom of expression also protects speech that offends, shocks and disturbs.
That should have settled the matter. It did not.
“Fuck Islam” Again
A few months after the High Court ruling, two protesters at Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration in London were arrested after displaying signs bearing the words “Fuck Islam”.
They remain under investigation for possible offences under the Public Order Act.
Britain thus finds itself in a peculiar situation: in Coskun’s case, the courts have established that insulting Islam is not in itself a criminal offence, while the police continue to arrest people for speech that does precisely that.
And the two protesters are not alone.
A Joke About Muhammad
In April, 65-year-old retired police officer Stephen Gray was convicted under the Communications Act over a Facebook post. Gray had shared a meme featuring a piece of bacon and a joke suggesting that people who eat bacon are less likely to marry a nine-year-old – a reference to the Islamic traditions concerning Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha.
The court found the post “grossly offensive” and ordered Gray to pay £1,100 in fines as well as legal costs. He has appealed the conviction with the support of Britain’s Free Speech Union.
Gray was originally charged over two posts, but was not convicted over the second because the court found it to be political expression on a matter of public interest. The bacon meme, by contrast, was deemed criminal, in part because the court regarded it as a matter of religion rather than politics.
That is, to put it mildly, a peculiar distinction in a country without a blasphemy law. If political ideologies may be freely insulted, but insulting a religion can expose someone to criminal punishment, then religion has in practice acquired a protection that other ideas do not enjoy.
The Heckler’s Veto
The Coskun case also illustrates an even more fundamental problem.
Coskun made a lawful statement. Another man responded with violence and a knife. The obvious duty of a state governed by the rule of law should be to protect the person exercising his freedom of speech from the person responding with violence. Yet Coskun himself was arrested and subsequently convicted at first instance.
The logic of the rule of law is thereby turned on its head: the more violent the reaction provoked by lawful speech, the greater the pressure to restrict the speech. That is the heckler’s veto – and it is also part of the explanation for Britons’ growing distrust of their institutions.
Islam Has No Right Not to Be Offended
Muslims, as human beings, are entitled to the protection of the rule of law against violence, threats and abuse. Their religion, however, is not entitled to respect. That is precisely the distinction that blasphemy laws erase.
But a formal right to insult a religion is worth little if one must first be arrested, investigated, prosecuted and dragged through several levels of the courts for the possibility of eventually being allowed to exercise it. On the contrary, that encourages self-censorship and creates uncertainty about where the law actually stands.
And that is a direct route to undermining public trust in the rule of law.
