Hamit Coskun’s Victories and Losses

T he third act of a dramatic show trial starring Hamit Coskun, who (in)famously burned the Koran, is over. Although the British court sided with Coskun, the decision cannot be celebrated as a victory for free expression or as a win for him. The protracted case constitutes a punishment that discourages similar demonstrations; the government’s lawyers subtly espoused special standards for Islam and Muslims; and the delicate judgments heavily relied on the environmental circumstances of the demonstration rather than the principles of protected expression. Perhaps the real accomplishment, though tragically coming at a great personal cost to Coskun, is that his lifelong status as a walking political bull’s-eye only reinforces the point of his protest, specifically that “Islam is the religion of terrorism.”

Coskun, who was born in Turkey and fled to England, was sentenced and fined for burning a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London while yelling profane condemnations such as “F*** Islam.” While some witnesses seen on video appear entirely unbothered by the protest, Coskun was attacked by two individuals. A (still unidentified) deliveryman passing by on a bike kicked Coskun. Additionally, Moussa Kadri called Coskun a “f***ing idiot,” said he was going to kill Coskun, went inside to retrieve a knife, and then physically attacked Coskun. In court, Coskun argued that his demonstration expressed opposition to the Turkish president, Islam, and terrorists — not Muslims categorically. Judge John McGarva nevertheless determined that Coskun “has a hatred of Muslims.” Coskun was deemed guilty of a religiously motivated public-order offense under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Public Order Act 1986.

To justify this decision, McGarva (poorly) reasoned that Coskun’s conduct must have been disorderly because there was disorder (“the consequences of the defendant’s provocative behaviour were that serious public disorder did break out”) while simultaneously claiming that the assaultive responses were indefensible (“neither of [the two attackers] appear to have any justification for the nature of their response”). Coskun was fined £240 with a statutory surcharge of £96, or roughly $450 in total. By contrast, Kadri was separately charged with possession of a bladed article and common assault, the latter being a low-level offense encompassing mild confrontations such as spitting on someone. Despite England’s zeal for prosecuting speech, Kadri was not charged with a speech offense for shouting death threats. Kadri was handed a suspended sentence, and thereby spared from prison.

In October, Justice Joel Bennathan sided with Coskun on appeal, concluding that the protest did not meet the thresholds for “disorderly” and “likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.” “We live in a liberal democracy. One of the precious rights that affords us is to express our own views and read, hear and consider ideas without the state intervening to stop us doing so,” Bennathan wrote. He continued, “The price we pay for that is having to allow others to exercise the same rights, even if that upsets, offends or shocks us.” Still, the ruling emphasizes contextual factors rather than the scope of protected speech. In his decision, Bennathan explained the conditions present during the protest: Coskun was not targeting a particular person, he protested alone for only a few minutes outside in daylight, he picked a political site (the Turkish Consulate) as the location (rather than a mosque), and other witnesses nearby were so unbothered that they neither ran away nor crossed the road. These considerations suggest that, had Coskun brought a friend and had the other spectators dashed away, then the case might have been decided differently — which implies that protections for burning a Koran are relative to the audience’s reaction. Such analysis therefore frames the limits of free expression as contingent on public acceptability, even though a principled commitment to free speech protects offensive messaging regardless of its perception.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) appealed. The latest installment of the case centered on whether burning a book — specifically, the Koran — in public is necessarily “disorderly.” David Perry, arguing for the CPS, maintained that Coskun’s protest “did not involve an exercise of legitimate freedom of expression” and instead “crossed the border into criminal conduct.” The CPS argued that burning a book in central London is “intrinsically” disorderly, which was only exacerbated by burning a religious text, raising it, and shouting “abusive and inflammatory language.”

In late February, the High Court ruled in favor of Coskun: “Behaviour may be both ‘disorderly’ . . . and ‘likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress’ and yet still not criminal because it is ‘reasonable.’” However, the decision is not a thorough defense of free expression, since it depends in part on procedural technicalities and the context of the demonstration. The court basically reiterates Bennathan’s evaluation of the particular circumstances of Coskun’s conduct, leaving open the question of whether ten people burning a Koran without much sunlight would be a lawful protest. “We conclude that [the CPS’s submissions] are essentially no more than counter-arguments offering a different perspective, or a different approach to the facts and circumstances of the case,” says the decision. It continues, “We are not persuaded that the court left any material factor out of account or relied on any immaterial factor.” By heavily weighing the specific environmental conditions, such verdicts ultimately fall short of defending firm protections for burning a Koran.

And so Coskun won in court, ideally marking the end of this lengthy saga. In theory, the CPS could appeal, although it would be politically unwise. Then again, it was ridiculous to pursue the most recent appeal.

Still, the most recent outcome should not prompt us to pop Champagne, since Coskun’s legal success comes at a personal cost to him that renders the victory negligible. Owing to the extensive media coverage of his case, Coskun’s face might as well be plastered on giant wanted signs everywhere. He says that two Iraqi men with knives broke into his home and threatened to kill him if he burned a Koran again; as a result, he moved to a safe house. In June of last year, the Telegraph reported that — even though Coskun was already in hiding — the Metropolitan Police had warned Coskun of an “imminent threat” because it had obtained intelligence about a terrorist plot to kill him. Last month, in advance of the court’s most recent decision, Coskun disclosed in the Spectator, “I am in discussions with the White House about claiming asylum in America in case the decision goes against me.” While Coskun has been hailed as a hero by free-speech enthusiasts, such support must feel insignificant while a plan to murder you is being devised. And, even though the judiciary has ultimately ruled in favor of free expression in this case, Coskun has been subjected to a painful process that amounts to its own punishment, which surely has functioned as a speech-chilling mechanism that discourages others from pursuing similar demonstrations.

I have to wonder, has Coskun really won anything at all?

And that brings us to a painful irony. Coskun yelled “Islam is the religion of terrorism” outside the Turkish consulate, and when speaking to the authorities later, he distinguished between terrorists and Muslims by arguing that “terrorists are people who just follow rules of the Koran book to destroy anyone who do not believe in their own, their way.” In the year that followed the protests, Islamists have posed such a significant threat to Coskun’s life that he had to relocate and consider fleeing to another country (again) — all of which only substantiates Coskun’s claims that Islam motivates terrorists to destroy those who have opposing views. So perhaps Coskun should feel immensely proud that his brief one-man protest prompted a long list of articles that identify Islam as a serious threat to Western civilization and further emphasize the decline of England’s protections for free expression.

And yet, at seemingly every stage of the case, the courts have avoided assessing whether Coskun’s feisty proclamations had any legitimacy while they have simultaneously acknowledged the hypersensitivity of Muslims.  The most recent decision states, “It was submitted [by the CPS] that although there is no law that criminalises blasphemy, [Coskun] had chosen to burn the Qu’ran, knowing full well how upsetting that act would be to any Muslim.” When paraphrasing the CPS’s argument, the court wrote, “It was obviously ‘likely’ in all the circumstances that people seeing and hearing what [Coskun] did and said would experience such emotions.” As justification for such claim, the CPS insisted that the previous court had erroneously overlooked Coskun’s two attackers; their violent conduct should be interpreted as the best indicator of a “likely” reaction. By claiming that we should expect Muslims to physically attack someone who is burning a Koran, the CPS only legitimizes Coskun’s assessments of Islam and its inflexible followers as dangerous.

Now, if possible, stretch your imagination to believe that such arguments would be posed against Christianity and Christians. No sane person would insist that it is “likely” that a Christian today would respond with a knife attack when faced with a protester burning a Bible and yelling “F*** Christianity.” The Crown’s argument relies on a lower threshold of conduct for upsetting Muslims, thereby implicitly carving out an exceptional protected status for Muslims and narrowing the scope of acceptable expression to placate them. More specifically, it’s extremely challenging to envision a scenario in which a person who burned a Bible would be as thoroughly prosecuted as Coskun. Such a case would almost certainly never emerge, in part because the United Kingdom suppresses Christian speech, even that which is merely thought and left unsaid; look no further than the case of Adam Smith-Connor, who was arrested, put on trial, and found guilty for praying in his head outside an abortion clinic.

If it is true, as the government’s legal team argues, that we can reasonably anticipate that a Muslim (unlike followers of other religions) will respond with violence when confronted with unpleasant criticisms of the faith, then the viable options for securing social peace are either 1) everybody else has to self-censor as an act of appeasement, or 2) the violent zealots among them — those who would, or do, kill or maim for lighting fire to some pages — should be deemed ineligible for society and removed, be it through imprisonment or deportation.