Once upon a time, I was a student at University College London studying law. I visited Speakers’ Corner by foot every Sunday —a British tradition. But now I find that the corner of free speech and freedom has been overrun by Islamists and the law of England is no more. This Theo Van Gogh Memorial Week, we praise Cohesion Correspondent Jens Heycke for exposing the climate of fear that has overcome Europe, particularly in the wake of events 22 years ago. We demand the right to speak and the right to criticise Islam just as every other religion, ideology and human practice may be criticised in a free country.
Above all, we demand that the law be enforced by our police and justice system. An Islamist who stabs a citizen must be imprisoned for life and ideally exiled to a penal colony in a deserted British overseas territory near the Antarctic. (I’m not being sarcastic.)
A person who speaks against Islam (or anything else) must have their rights as an Englishman protected. A Jew who goes to synagogue or a faith school must have their rights as an Englishman protected. The failure to do so once caused a revolution in the colonies and the failure to do so again today may lead to a similar outcome on our own island. Enough of the tyranny that takes our rights away in the name of “tolerance”. Enough. - Daniel Clarke-Serret (Editor, Guerre and Shalom)
Previously on Theo Van Gogh Memorial Week:
“I can burn a Bible, I can spit on a Bible, I can stamp on a Bible, and I’ll go about my day. If I burn a Quran, the law might not even be on my side, as we saw with the Turkish asylum seeker.” —Ada Akpala
British commentator Ada Akpala recently surprised a GB News panel with a forthright critique of Britain’s free speech double standard: you can criticize any person or any religion, except the Prophet Muhammad and Islam. If you do that, you risk prosecution and possibly losing your life.¹
The recording went viral, garnering hundreds of thousands of views on social media. Akpala didn’t say anything that isn’t already well known. It’s just that she had the courage to speak out and declare what others are too timid to say.
The specter of Islamophobia accusations and violent attacks now looms so ominously over public discourse that it silences not only those who might criticize Islam, but even those who defend the right to criticize Islam.
Akpala cites the example of a Turkish-born immigrant, Hamit Coskun, who burned a Quran near the Turkish consulate to protest Turkish President Erdogan’s policies. A bystander, Moussa Kadri, attacked Coskun, kicking him, stomping on him, and slashing at him with a large bread knife.
After the attack, a judge sternly scolded Coskun (the victim) for having a “deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers” and convicted him of a “religiously aggravated” public order offence.² Prosecutors had originally charged him with causing distress to “the religious institution of Islam” (as if a religion could be a crime victim) before quietly rewording the charge. Coskun was eventually cleared on appeal.
Coskun’s knife-wielding attacker, on the other hand, walked out of court without serving a day behind bars.
Kadri, the Muslim attacker, didn’t serve a day in jail for what, by any common-sense reading, was attempted murder. The judge appeared to be making excuses for him, saying, “you were clearly deeply offended.”³ The lesson: offend a Muslim, and the courts will treat violence against you as understandable. You face prosecution; your attacker faces a slap on the wrist.
A bastion of free speech, demolished
This incident was no one-off. I can relate others, closer to me personally.
In 1872, the British Parliament recognized Speakers’ Corner as a free speech forum. At the northeast corner of London’s Hyde Park, speakers can hold forth on politics, philosophy, or anything they like; hecklers can challenge and debate them. Over the years, Karl Marx, George Orwell, and many other legends have spoken there.
I became a Speakers’ Corner regular when I was an LSE student in the 1980s. I have continued to visit whenever I’m in London and have befriended many of the legendary regular speakers, from Lord Soper to Lord Barker.⁴
One of those regulars, Hatun Tash, is a convert from Islam to Christianity who speaks about her faith and occasionally criticizes Islam. Tash has been assaulted by outraged Muslims on multiple occasions. In 2021, she was viciously stabbed.
In December 2020, the police asked a Muslim mob surrounding Tash to leave. When they refused, the police asked Tash to leave. When she refused, they arrested her.⁵ The police also delivered Tash the following official notice:
Although Tash’s attackers were recorded on multiple videos, not a single one, including the stabber, has been charged with anything.
Hatun Tash has been violently attacked multiple times for criticizing Islam. She is the only person the police have ever arrested in these attacks.
I spoke with my friend Steve, a Speakers’ Corner legend, about the environment at the Corner. As a regular speaker for over 20 years, he is a good barometer of the deterioration of free speech. Over the years, he has watched the crowds dwindle and become increasingly Muslim. In the past, he faced vituperative heckling; now he increasingly gets threats, which the police just shrug off.
Steve has spent decades standing in the one place in Britain set aside for unpopular opinions. In the last few years, he told me, the police seem to treat the unpopular opinion, not the threat, as the problem.
It can’t happen here…
The First Amendment should not lull Americans into insouciance. Politicians and private institutions have ways of doing end-runs around free speech protections.
In 2012, the Obama administration initially blamed the deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on a YouTube trailer called Innocence of Muslims. Its creator, a Coptic Christian, couldn’t be prosecuted for the film itself; the First Amendment saw to that.
So federal authorities found another way to get him. He was on probation for a fraud conviction and barred from using aliases or going online without permission. Within weeks of the uproar, he was arrested, held without bail, and sentenced to a year in federal prison.
The court insisted none of the violations concerned the film, and technically that’s true. But, as law professor Jonathan Turley noted, violations like his rarely bring prison time at all.
Universities also suppress free expression about Islam. In 2022, an art history professor at Hamline University made the mistake of showing images of Islamic art depicting the Prophet Muhammad. The professor was sternly rebuked by the university president, and her contract was not renewed. To be clear: the professor displayed Islamic art created by a Muslim, and even provided a trigger warning that it might offend some. Nevertheless, she was penalized for it.⁶
Beyond the institutional threats, those who contemplate criticizing Islam can’t help but recall the violent attacks on others who have done so: Theo van Gogh, murdered; Charlie Hebdo, 12 people murdered; Avijit Roy, murdered; Kurt Westergaard, barely escaped an axe attack; Salman Rushdie, barely survived a knife attack; and so on.
A while back, I spoke with Flemming Rose, the editor who published drawings of Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten, earning him a place on Islamist death lists. He pointed out how the most strident critics of other religions are curiously silent when it comes to Islam. Some of these critics openly confess this:
“I know what keeps me from critiquing Islam on my blog is just fear. I’ve got three kids. So I know I can say anything about Christianity or Mormonism, and I’m not living in fear, which is a testament to Christianity and Mormonism, and that’s wonderful.” —Phil Zuckerman, atheist professor of secular studies (at Pitzer College)
No blasphemy law required
Quran-burner Hamit Coskun was eventually cleared on appeal, and Hatun Tash collected her settlements from the police. Defenders of the system might call that proof it works. It isn’t. Coskun was branded a criminal and dragged through three courts for burning a book he owned, while the man who came at him with a knife never spent a day in prison. Tash was repeatedly attacked, and the police responded by advising her to stop expressing her beliefs and stay away.
Neither Britain nor America has a blasphemy law. Neither needs one. A violent attack and a public order charge here, a probation violation there, and the message gets through: criticize Islam at your own risk. Most people will simply stay silent. That is how free speech dies in a liberal democracy: not by statute, but by intimidation that the authorities choose to tolerate. The First Amendment can stop Congress from outlawing blasphemy. It can’t stop officials who would rather find another way.
Ada hosts a podcast for the Equiano Project, an organization devoted to open discussion about race, culture, and politics. Full disclosure: she previously hosted me on her podcast for a discussion of my book, Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire.
Coskun was fined £240 plus a £96 surcharge. He appealed the conviction, which the appeal judge at Southwark Crown Court set aside. The Crown Prosecution Service then appealed that ruling, but the High Court dismissed the appeal, finding the Southwark court had not left any material factor out of account or relied on an immaterial one.
The sentencing remarks in Kadri’s case are worth reading if you want to get furious. The judge noted that Kadri said he was going to kill Coskun, went and got a knife, and then slashed at Coskun with it. To top it off, he tried to mislead investigators, claiming that he only had a dull palette knife. Nevertheless, the judge noted, “you were clearly deeply offended” and let him walk free with some unpaid work and a few days of rehabilitation.
Lord Soper was an actual peer of the realm. Despite his signature bowler hat and pinstripes, Michael “Lord” Barker was no lord at all. He ran a newspaper stand on Oxford Street. Lord Barker and some other notable hecklers are featured in this video.
Tash subsequently won settlements from the Metropolitan Police. They apologized and paid her £10,000 in compensation and costs for the December 2020 and May 2021 arrests. After a June 2022 arrest, she was awarded another £10,000 in damages and costs.
In 2024, the university settled a lawsuit filed by the professor for an undisclosed sum.
