Everybody (Blasphemy's Back)

You don't have to like the act of burning the Koran to be disturbed by its prosecution.

Reports of the far-right’s death, in the wake of Trump’s re-election and subsequent economic war against America’s purported allies, have been greatly exaggerated.

The mainstream right has taken a hit, as shown by recent election results up here and Down Under, but populist right-wing parties and candidates in Europe continue to do well. The Trump-adjacent “national conservative” candidate won Poland’s recent Presidential election, for example, and The Netherlands’ far-right stalwart Geert Wilders is confident enough to bring down the country’s government. In Portugal the populist Chega (“Enough”) party surged ahead of the center-left Socialists to become the official opposition.

This ends a long period of two-party dominance by mainstream left- and right-of-centre parties in Portugal and introduces a new political era. A “Chega Genesis,” one might say.

And in Great Britain, where Donald Trump is as popular as syphilis, Nigel Farage’s upstart Reform Party did very well in local elections and are way ahead of Labour and the moribund Conservatives in recent polls.

These polls were conducted before this magistrate’s court ruling, which effectively restored a law against blasphemy which Parliament had abolished a few years back.

Well, blasphemy against one religion, at least:

A man who burned a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London has branded his prosecution “an assault on free speech” as campaigners argued the ruling “signals a concerning capitulation to Islamic blasphemy codes”.

Hamit Coskun was found guilty on Monday of a religiously aggravated public order offence, having shouted “f*** Islam”, “Islam is religion of terrorism” and “Koran is burning” while holding the flaming religious text aloft earlier this year.

The 50-year-old had argued his criticism was of Islam in general rather than its followers, but District Judge John McGarva said he could not accept this, finding that Coskun’s actions were “highly provocative” and that he was “motivated at least in part by a hatred of Muslims”.

Coskun was convicted at Westminster Magistrates’ Court of 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 section five of the Public Order Act 1986.

Turkey-born Coskun, who is half-Kurdish and half-Armenian, travelled from his home in the Midlands to carry out the act in Rutland Gardens, Knightsbridge, on February 13 and in court argued he had protested peacefully and burning the Koran amounted to freedom of expression.

Compare and contrast:

A senior Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) official has given a detailed explanation of the decision not to prosecute any member of the Palestine car convoy for hate crimes that terrorised the community on the Finchley Road.

Nick Price, head of the CPS special crime and counter terrorism division, was guest speaker at the Board of Deputies monthly meeting on Sunday, where he openly addressed claims the community had been “let down” by the decision to drop charges against four men.

In May 2021 group of men drove 200 miles from Bradford to taunt the community from within a convoy of cars yelling ‘F*** the Jews… F*** all of them. F*** their mothers, f*** their daughters.’

But in November charges against two men, who had denied involvement in the taunts were dropped. This followed an earlier decision to drop charges against two other men, who were thought to have been involved in the convoy.

Price told Deputies: ”I would have loved to have prosecuted that case.

“Unfortunately we could not positively identify the people in the cars.

“We couldn’t prove to the criminal standard that the people in the cars are the people that were issuing antisemitic comments.

“That was a pretty fundamental evidential issue and we couldn’t get beyond that.

If only there were some way to identify the owner of a motor vehicle caught on video with its inhabitants committing a “public order offence.” Maybe a plate with letters and numbers on the back. But that’s just me with these crazy ideas again.