Is burning the Koran a more serious crime than assault?

In central London in February, Turkey-born asylum seeker Hamit Coskun was attacked with a knife and violently assaulted. His assailant, Moussa Kadri, swung at him multiple times with a bread knife. ‘I’m going to kill you’, Kadri said, before kicking and spitting on Coskun as he fell to the ground. Yet it is the victim of this harrowing assault, not his attacker, who committed the more serious crime in the eyes of the English justice system. Because prior to being attacked, Coskun had burned a copy of the Koran.

If there were any doubt that the UK now has both a two-tier justice system and Islamic blasphemy laws, then the cases of Kadri and Coskun surely put this to rest.

Back in June, Coskun was convicted of a ‘religiously aggravated public-order offence’, after he burned the Koran outside the Turkish consulate in protest against Turkey’s President Erdoğan. In Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Coskun was found guilty and fined £240. Worse, the judge cited the knife attack and held it up as proof that Coskun’s Koran-burning had led to public disorder. Apparently, he had all but brought this violence on himself.

The contrast with Kadri’s treatment could not be more stark. In sentencing him yesterday at Southwark Crown Court, the judge bent over backwards to minimise the seriousness of the attack. Kadri, who pleaded guilty to common assault and possession of a bladed weapon, was spared jail. He was instead handed a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to pay a £150 surcharge. The judge accepted he had merely lost his ‘temper and self-control’ as a result of being ‘deeply offended’.

The judge even saw fit to lavish praise on Kadri during the sentencing. Apparently, it was a ‘tragedy’ that he had ended up before the court despite leading such a productive life. He was a ‘loved husband and father’, a ‘hard worker’ and a man whose colleagues ‘cannot praise highly enough’, we were told.

The message sent by these two court decisions is chilling. The English justice system has made it clear that it will punish blasphemy against Islam. Worse, it considers physical violence – even slashing at someone with a knife – to be an almost understandable response to those who besmirch Islam’s honour. So much so that attacking a blasphemer attracts a smaller punishment than the act of blasphemy itself.

The British justice system has taken a dark turn. It is not only criminalising those who blaspheme against Islam – it is also putting a target on their backs. It has given a green light to the use of violence to silence Islam’s critics. This cannot be allowed to stand in a secular, democratic country.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.