Koran burning conviction overturned: blasphemy law cannot be introduced via the back door
17 October 2025
Rex v Hamit Coskun (Judgement on appeal), Southwark Crown Court
Hearing on 9th and 10th October 2025
It will come to the surprise of many that the common law offence of blasphemy in the UK was only abolished in 2008. It has no place in a secular society such as ours. However attempts have been made to use the Public Order Act 1986 to introduce blasphemy by the back door, by criminalising religious hatred offences.
This legislation excludes “antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religiions’ from its religious hatred provisions.
As Joshua Rozenberg describes in his column in the Law Society Gazette, when Hamit Coskun bought a copy of the Koran and set it on fire while standing near the Turkish consulate in London, he was accused and convicted under the Public Order Act of using disorderly behaviour “within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby”. District Judge McGarva, sitting at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, found that the defendant had shouted “Islam is the religion of terrorism” as he burned the book. Whilst he was doing this a man came out of a nearby building, saw what was going on and threatened Coskin with a knife. This man (Kodri) was arrested and tried.
Coskin was found guilty in those proceedings and he was fined. As Rozenberg observes, “defence lawyers had accused the Crown Prosecution Service of trying to bring back the law of blasphemy and expanding it to include Islam”…Critics complained of ‘two tier justice’ when Judge Hiddleston, sitting at Southwark Crown Court suspended Kari’s sentence for 18 months and imposed community punishments.
In this appeal Coskun was crowdfunded by the Free Speech Union.
The appeal judge handing down judgment at Southwark Crown Court on 10 October 2025, set aside Coskun’s conviction. This successful appeal represents a significant affirmation of the rights of free speech and peaceful protest, especially where law and public order interact with religious sensitivities and the boundaries of offence.
Background and Factual Context
To reiterate, Hamit Coskun was originally convicted in June 2025 for a religiously aggravated public order offence after burning a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish Consulate in London while voicing highly provocative statements about Islam. The incident escalated when a bystander, Kadri, called the Defendant a “fucking idiot” and said he would “fucking kill” him. Kadri went back into a building and re-emerged moments later brandishing a knife. He chased the Defendant into the road, making slashing
motions towards him with the knife. The Defendant fell to the ground and Kadri began kicking him and spat at him.
When interviewed under caution Coskun was asked why he decided to burn the Koran and he said that the book is inciting people to opt for terrorism. As he believed that it is a terror book, he believed that it should be forbidden. He was asked what his feelings were towards Muslims. He said, “I don’t have any problem or any prejudice against Muslim people so long as they don’t use violence I don’t have any problems with it. This is their human rights…. burning that Koran is my right..”
He said he did not intend to incite racial hatred, “I’m not racist at all. I was just trying to educate people about what sort of religion Islam is”. He expressed his view that there was no law against doing what he did. He believed his actions were peaceful. [para 25]
The initial magistrates’ court judgment found Coskun guilty under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, enhanced by the aggravation provisions of section 31 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and fined him accordingly.
Coskun’s defence and his supporters, including free speech campaign groups, argued that the prosecution criminalised political protest and equated causing offence with criminal disorder. His conduct was presented as a solo, peaceful, albeit provocative, protest against Turkish state policies, motivated by his personal and political background as a Turkish-born UK resident of Kurdish and Armenian heritage.
Issues on Appeal
The appeal was heard by Bennathan J and two Justices of the Peace on 9 and 10 October 2025. At the core were key legal and factual questions:
- Did Coskun’s behaviour amount to disorderly conduct in law?
2. Was there evidence that it caused, or was likely to cause, harassment, alarm, or distress to people in sight or hearing?
3. Did the religious aggravation threshold apply?
4. Was it correct in law for the courts to attribute criminal liability to Coskun because of the violent reaction of a bystander, rather than inherent disorderliness in his conduct?
5. Was Coskun’s protest protected by the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the ECHR, and was the criminal sanction justified or proportionate?
The Prosecution accepted that there is no law that criminalises blasphemy but submitted that the choice to burn the Koran, knowing full well how upsetting that act would be to any Muslim is, in combination with the shouted comments, an ample basis for us to find the offence proved in its aggravated form.
The Court’s Legal Reasoning
The court opened by making clear several foundational principles:
“There is no offence of blasphemy in our law.” [my italics] This echoed several UK appellate cases post-abolition of the common law offence of blasphemy.
The mere fact that religious believers (or others) were deeply offended or shocked by conduct or speech was not, in itself, a basis for criminal liability.
The Court noted in passing that “demonstrating hostility to a racial or religious group is not, by itself, an offence. It is only when an accused is found to have committed another offence that they are held to have committed a yet more serious crime by reason of their expressed prejudice.”[para 15]
The right to free expression encompasses not just polite and popular speech but also that which “offends, shocks, or disturbs.”
In a liberal democracy, the criminal law should intervene only to prevent concrete harm, not merely to shield people from offence.
The judges outlined the legal questions relevant for a conviction under section 5 POA:
Did Coskun use threatening, abusive, or disorderly behaviour?
Was this within the hearing or sight of persons likely to suffer harassment, alarm, or distress?
Did he intend, or was he aware, his conduct might be disorderly?
Had he any reasonable grounds to believe that no one likely to be caused such distress would witness his conduct—or that his actions were reasonable?
If found guilty, was the act aggravated by hostility based on religious group membership?
“in our view the actions of Kadri and the delivery cyclist do not assist the Prosecution’s cause for a number of reasons. We are concerned with the likely not the actual. Both men may very well have felt insulted but that is no longer a basis for the section 5 offence. Kadri may well have grown very angry, as his threats to kill then procuring of a knife before attacking the Defendant would tend to suggest,
but being angry is not the same as being harassed, alarmed or distressed. Further, … the Courts should be wary of allowing the criminal reaction of one person to make a criminal of another for exercising
their right to free speech.” [para 41]
Importantly, the court emphasised that the “disorderly” element must be judged not just by the reaction of bystanders, but by the nature and context of the behaviour itself. The court warned against a “heckler’s veto” — the idea that someone’s free speech loses legal protection purely because others react violently.
The court was clear: genuine criticism or protest—even if it deeply offends some—is not inherently disorderly. Public order law is not to be manipulated as a proxy for blasphemy law or to criminalise political protest.
Factual Findings
The court carefully reviewed the evidence. It found:
Coskun’s burning of the Koran, and his accompanying statements, were deliberate acts of protest directed at the Turkish state and its policies, not at any individual in particular.
The protest was not aggressive and did not target or pursue passers-by. Coskun was attacked, but did not himself threaten or assault anyone.
Although onlookers, especially Muslims, could have been caused distress or offence, the primary cause of disorder was the violent response of the bystander, not Coskun’s original conduct.
The court accepted that holding a protest in front of an embassy—a “political emanation” of a state—was distinct from disrupting worship at a mosque or church. The location and political context weighed against finding Coskun’s actions unlawful. The bench recognised that the essence of the case was political symbolic speech, and that such speech has especially high protection under Article 10 ECHR, subject only to the strictest proportionality tests.
Judgment and Order
In a decisive ruling, the Crown Court overturned Coskun’s conviction:
The appeal was allowed on both points of law and fact.
The court declined to find that Coskun’s protest was “disorderly” as per the legal test, despite its offensive content.
The fact that violence ensued did not transform Coskun’s conduct into a criminal offence.
The conviction for a religiously aggravated public order offence was quashed, and Coskun was acquitted of all criminal liability.
Wider Implications and Judicial Warnings
The judgment has been hailed by free speech advocates as drawing a bright line between criticism of ideas and attacks on individuals, and as a rebuke to the original judgment, which had been seen as enabling “victim blaming” or a blasphemy code by proxy.
The court strongly reiterated that the law must not allow the use of public order offences as a means of “enforcing religious orthodoxy,” and warned against interpreting violent reactions to offensive speech as grounds for prosecuting the speaker. The judgment stressed the need for public authorities to distinguish between the need to preserve public order and the obligation to protect robust, even deeply unpopular, peaceful protest.
The case further signals that, under English law, the boundary of legitimate protest is traversed only when conduct moves beyond offence to actual, intentional harassment or incitement (not present in Coskun’s conduct). The ruling preserves the longstanding English principle that the remedy for offence is more speech, not criminalisation.
Conclusion
The Southwark Crown Court’s appellate judgment in Rex v Hamit Coskun is a landmark for freedom of expression. By decisively quashing Coskun’s conviction, the court affirmed that English law, post-abolition of blasphemy, protects even offensive and shocking speech—so long as it does not rise to incitement, harassment, or genuine public disorder. The right to protest and criticise, including through theatrical and symbolic acts directed toward state policies or religious ideas, commands special protection, and cannot be abridged simply because it offends or provokes others—even strongly.
This decision is likely to influence future public order prosecutions where political protest, offence, and religious sensitivities intersect, reaffirming the primacy of free speech in a liberal democracy.
Th Court found that the prosecutors had not surmounted the second hurdle on the way to verdict: the evidence had not established that Coskun’s behaviour had been within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress. The demonstration had been brief, solitary and not aimed at any individual. It took place in daylight near diplomatic premises, whose occupants were shielded against protests. Nearby Muslims might have felt insulted, and Kadri was clearly angry, but that was not the test.
Meanwhile, concludes Rozenberg, “Bennathan J’s robust approach has sent a clear message to prosecutors and magistrates: blasphemy is not a crime and freedom of expression includes the right to cause offence.
