Robert Jenrick: We risk a two-tier blasphemy law, fit for Starmer’s two-tier Britain

Robert Jenrick is Shadow Justice Secretary, a former Home Office, Health and Housing Minister and is the MP for Newark.

In February, a man was arrested after footage emerged of him burning a Quran outside the Turkish Consulate in London. He said that he was protesting against the policies of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, which he feared were turning Turkey into a “base for radical Islamists.”

He was arrested, and charged by the CPS with a religiously aggravated public order offence. Most concerningly, his charge sheet stated that he acted with intent to cause harassment, alarm, or distress “against the religious institution of Islam”.

This charge was plainly defective.

The Public Order Act only applies when offence has been caused to an actual person – and obviously, the “religious institution of Islam” is not a person. In effect, if the CPS had been allowed to continue with the case using this charge, they would have been bringing blasphemy laws in by the back door.

That’s why I went public with the full details of the case, raising concerns about the fact that our public order laws were being used to bring in blasphemy charges by the back door. I also wrote to the Chief Inspector of the CPS, urging him to urgently review the charge. Unsurprisingly, people were outraged.

Fortunately, the CPS caved and announced that they would drop the charge, but it should never have come to this. It shouldn’t have taken a political campaign for the CPS to recognise that this was a clear abuse of our public order laws. And this is by no means an unqualified victory – the new charge is also seriously concerning.

Though the reference to the “religious institution of Islam” has been removed from the charge sheet, this man is still standing trial because he burned a religious text.

In certain circumstances, it might be a public order offence to burn a religious text. For example, burning a Torah scroll at the doors of a synagogue – that’s clearly designed to harass and intimidate particular individuals. But burning a religious text as an act of protest should never be a criminal offence. Offensive? Yes. Criminal? Absolutely not.

The challenge with the Quran in particular is that, over and above most other religious texts, many Muslims say that they regard it as offensive wherever and whenever it happens. This poses a huge problem for us as a society. In a free society, it must be possible to mock and criticise religions, including in ways that people may find offensive. Criminalising the burning of a Quran in any setting effectively creates a blasphemy law – and one that only really applies to one particular religion.

It’s a two-tier blasphemy law, fit for Keir Starmer’s two-tier Britain.

The CPS’s charge risked bringing a blasphemy law through the back door. But there are now MPs within the Labour Party who aren’t shy about introducing one through the front door.

Last November, Labour MP Tahir Ali asked Sir Keir Starmer whether he would introduce laws to ban “desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of Abrahamic religions.” The Prime Minister’s response should have been clear. Burning a religious text might be offensive, but we do not – and should not – have blasphemy laws in the UK. That much should have been obvious.

However, shockingly, Starmer refused to rule it out. He said that we must tackle “Islamophobia in all its forms”, essentially conceding that the state has a duty to prevent criticism of Islam.

In February, Labour’s Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was asked whether it should be a crime to desecrate a Quran. Once again, her answer should have been clear. Instead, she refused to commit one way or the other, saying that “we already have a framework in place” to deal with “threats to our cohesion and our communities”. Why is this Government so reluctant to speak out in defence of free speech?

When push comes to shove, Labour has shown that it isn’t serious about protecting free speech. Back in 2021, a schoolteacher in Batley was forced into hiding after showing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad to his students. His school faced protests from Muslim parents. What was the response from Tracy Brabin, Labour’s Mayor of West Yorkshire?

To “welcome the school’s apology and recognition of the offence this has caused”. Not a word in defence of free speech, and not a word of condemnation for the fact that, in certain communities, criticism or mockery of Islam is already effectively impossible.

As we speak, the Government is planning to introduce an official definition of Islamophobia. This may be a well-intentioned to tackle anti-Muslim hate, which everyone can agree should be stamped out. But given the Labour Party’s inability to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Islam and hate based on personal characteristics, a formal definition could open the door to worrying restrictions on free speech.

While we don’t know what definition the Government’s ‘Islamophobia Commission’ will propose, we do know that senior figures within the Labour Party have previously supported the definition proposed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. This ‘APPG definition’ was formally adopted by Labour’s National Executive Committee in 2019.

According to that definition, ‘Islamophobia’ could include complaining about immigration from Muslim majority countries, characterising grooming gangs as ‘majority Muslim’, or criticising Islam from a philosophical perspective. This would be, in effect, reintroducing a formal blasphemy law. No other religion is afforded this unique protection.

We do not have blasphemy laws in this country, and rightly so. They were abolished by Parliament in 2008, a deliberate and principled step which signalled that, in a free society, no religion should be shielded from insult, irreverence, or ridicule. We knew then, as we know now, that freedom of speech means nothing without the right to cause offence.

It’s not for the CPS, the courts, or the police to reintroduce blasphemy laws by the back door.

Unfortunately, when politicians like Starmer don’t stand up for free speech, institutions are given free rein to crack down on speech which might cause offence to one particular group. We must be much stronger in our defence of free speech – including, and especially, when that speech is offensive.

Fail to do so, and we risk losing one of the precious freedoms that makes our country so great.