To quote today’s Guardian, a bloke called “Hamit Coskun, 50, shouted ““fuck Islam”, “Islam is religion of terrorism” and “Qur’an is burning” as he held aloft the burning Islamic text outside the Turkish consulate in Rutland Gardens, Knightsbridge, London, on 13 February, Westminster magistrates court heard.” Hamit was born in Turkey and is half-Kurdish and half-Armenian and travelled down to the Turkish embassy in London and promptly set fire to a copy of the Qur’an. I could think of better ways of spending my time and money, but each to their own. Except that poor old Hamit is in court because allegedly he committed a religiously aggravated public order offence of using disorderly behaviour “within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress”, motivated by “hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam”, contrary to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Public Order Act 1986. Dear oh dear.
If the prosecution succeeds, we will have reintroduced blasphemy by the back door, an absurd and antiquated law we got rid of in 2008. Frankly, if anyone wants to say “fuck Islam”, “Islam is religion of terrorism” and “Qur’an is burning” or to shout about any other religion, they should be allowed to do so. No one should end up in court for saying any of these things.
I am not in favour of burning books of any kind, even those about religious superstition. People should be free to read whatever they want to read and in any event Hamit wasn’t burning a Qur’an on behalf of anyone or anything. He just has a point of view which many people share, but would probably not share in public for fear of being attacked by a mad terrorist.
If people are offended about people being hostile to religion or just taking the piss out of it, then just grow a pair. And try to convince us non-believers that there is some truth in what they believe in. Unfortunately, I have not yet seen any evidence that biblical texts are anything other than gobbledegook. I might not be quite so blunt speaking as Hamit but I have more sympathy with some of the things he says than the nonsense I hear preached by religious folk.
This case must fail because at a time when hardly anyone believes in a God, the few who still do, can’t take us to court when we rip into their imaginary friend. That, you see, would be blasphemy too.And we can’t have that.
