On February 13, 2025, Hamit Coskun set fire to his copy of the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in London. Coskun—an atheist who fled persecution from the Turkish authorities in 2022—was there to protest Islamic extremism in his home country. For this act, he was assaulted and knocked to the ground by a bystander, kicked by another passerby, and charged with a “religiously aggravated public order offense” by the Crown Prosecution Service.

At his sentencing, a UK district judge told Coskun that his protest was “provocative,” concluding that he had been driven by “a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers.” But in the account below, Coskun insists that he was attacking ideas, not people. He warns that the same religious authoritarianism he fled in his home country is now infecting his adoptive country, too.

This piece was originally published in The Spectator.

—The Editors

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...