Burning Books and Burning Freedoms: Blasphemy Law by the Backdoor

 

In 2008, Britain did something remarkable. It abolished its last remaining blasphemy laws. After centuries of prosecuting people for offending religious sensibilities, usually Christian ones, we finally codified a basic principle of liberal democracy: the state has no business protecting God from insult. But like a vampire rising from the crypt, blasphemy law is back. Only now it’s wearing different clothes. Today, it doesn’t come dressed in cassocks and crucifixes. It marches in under the banner of “harassment,” “hate,” and, let’s be honest, Islam. Take the case of the man who burned a copy of the Koran during a political protest. Whatever your views on the symbolism or taste of the act, here’s the crux: he didn’t hurt anyone. He didn’t threaten violence. He didn’t incite riots. He didn’t call for holy war or desecrate a mosque. He burned a book, a political act, aimed at making a point about a religion whose political claims and cultural dominance are fair game in a free society. And yet, we are told this is “harassment.” That he must be prosecuted. That somehow, the feelings of a religious group now override the right to political expression. This isn’t justice. It’s submission and not the poetic kind. Let’s call this what it is: blasphemy law by the backdoor. And let’s be clear: it only goes one way. Christians get lampooned in theatre, mocked on the BBC, and parodied in every university seminar on “colonialism and patriarchy.” Nobody is arrested for putting a crucifix in a jar of urine. But burn a Koran, and suddenly the state has to step in and restore order, lest society collapse under the weight of a bruised imam’s ego. This isn’t about protecting minorities. It’s about policing criticism of one religion, Islam. It’s about carving out a special legal shield that says, “this faith is untouchable.” And that is fundamentally un-British. In a free country, you are allowed to offend. You are allowed to protest. You are allowed to burn symbols, flags, books, effigies, because ideas are not sacred. Only freedom is. If Muslims in Britain want equal respect under the law, they must accept equal scrutiny in the public square. No more. No less. They can argue, protest, publish, and shout. But they do not get to silence others by crying “harassment” every time their holy book is challenged. The danger here isn’t a man with a lighter and a Koran. The danger is a cowardly elite, terrified of being called “Islamophobic,” who will sell out your freedom to protect their own reputations. The same people who would let you rot for misgendering someone on Twitter, while letting grooming gangs fester in northern towns for fear of being called racist. They call it progress. We call it dhimmitude. Enough. We burned the blasphemy laws for a reason. Let’s not allow them to rise from the ashes in the name of “sensitivity.” Britain is not a caliphate. And in Britain, no idea is above criticism, especially not the ones that claim divine authority.