UK Police enforce Islamic blasphemy laws after Qur'an burning in Manchester

A man was arrested and charged with 'causing racially and religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm, distress'.

In the summer of 2023, an anti-Islam activist named Salwan Momika publicly burned a copy of the Qur’an in central Stockholm. This act would earn him a court date on the charges of causing “agitation against an ethnic group”. Momika would not live to have his day in court however—as it was reported last week that Momika had been gunned down in his home in an apparent act of Islamic extremism. Five people were arrested in connection with his murder.

It has been clear for the longest time now that Europe is either unwilling or unable to tackle the growing problem of Islamofascism. And worse—our leaders and authorities behave in ways that are indistinguishable from enforcing the very Islamic blasphemy laws that motivate executions of this kind.

Understandably incensed by yet another murder in the name of Islam on European soil, a 47 year old man from Manchester decided to arrange a Qur’an burning of his own in Salwan Momika’s honour.

Now, I'm not a fan of ‘desecration’ as a general rule. But, assuming the object being desecrated is your own property, ‘desecration’ can be a legitimate act of free expression, protest and defiance. And it could be argued that ‘desecration’ of this sort becomes especially necessary when a statistically significant number of people living amongst us would have you murdered for it.

In rather predictable fashion the 47 year old man was swiftly arrested moments after appearing on a live-stream and making good on his promise to burn a Qur’an in central Manchester. He can be seen being led into the back of a police van amongst a sizeable police presence in the image below.

I will not publish the man’s identity here, for obvious reasons—although the Greater Manchester Police took the decision to publish his full name, date of birth and partial address on their website and social media feeds. This is not unusual when someone is charged with an offence that has significant public interest of course—but you would have hoped that more sensible heads may have prevailed in this case given the obvious implications for his safety. Anyone filmed burning a Qur’an faces the very credible threat of assassination for the rest of their life.

It does not strike me as especially unreasonable that there may be some laws about setting fire to things in public. However the actual charges and the subsequent comments from the judge should enrage any right-thinking person.

The man was “charged with causing racially and religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm, distress”. It could not be clearer from the charges that it was the presence of the Qur’an that made this a criminal offence—essentially codifying Islamic blasphemy laws into the UK criminal system.

During the live-stream in Manchester, a man can be seen attempting to intervene and prevent the book from being burnt—this individual then made a complaint to the police. This man, later identified as Fahad Iqbal also provided a ‘victim impact statement’ to the court. Iqbal said: “I was quite shocked, disgusted and offended. I’m a Muslim. I still can’t believe someone would do this…when he began to burn the Koran my heart was about to break out. This is the most emotion I have ever felt.”

So, being a Muslim and having hurty feelings about someone burning their own property at an event you were not even required to attend appears to be enough to have someone arrested and charged with a crime in the UK.

The arrested man from Manchester pleaded guilty to the charges and will be sentenced in April. In summary Judge Margaret McCormack said that: “The Koran is a sacred book to Muslims and treating it as you did is going to cause extreme distress…This is a tolerant country, but we just do not tolerate this behaviour.”

By speaking in this manner the judge is essentially telling us that the Muslim holy book is to be given special privileges. She is confirming that non-Muslims in the UK are also obliged to consider the Qur’an a sacred text.

Our own Prime Minister, Keir Starmer also demonstrated himself to be less than useless on this issue recently when he was directly asked in parliament whether he would create laws prohibiting the ‘desecration’ of ‘sacred texts’. He completely ducked the question, but it appears we now have our answer anyway—it is indeed a criminal offence.

And what else is our Labour government doing in response to the spread of violent Islamofascism? They have appointed the Deputy Prime Minister to create a council to tackle the problem of…‘Islamophobia’.

Our cultural and political discourse is awash with ‘anti-fascist’ cosplayers that fly off the handle the moment they believe someone may have an opinion that is a bit right-wing. However, when we are faced with a sizeable group of people that will reliably spill blood if their beliefs are criticised, their prophet satirised or their holy book disrespected—these same ‘anti-fascists’ mysteriously go missing.

People may be tempted to wave this away as simply a minority of extremists that support violence and censorship in the name of Islam. Perhaps that’s true. Yet you may have noticed a distinct lack of ‘community leaders’ and Islamic interest groups willing to defend the right to disrespect the Qur’an without fear of being arrested or murdered for it.

In a free society, people should be free to choose what symbols or objects they wish to revere as ‘sacred’. They do not however, get to dictate to the rest of us what we must find sacred too. This basic liberal distinction is one the UK justice system and our leaders are woefully incapable of understanding.

Being arrested for burning a holy book rather than being murdered for it is merely a lateral shift within the same enforcement of blasphemy laws. Even if our leaders and authorities haven’t cottoned on to the real problem here—the general voting public have. And no government can hope to remain in power in Europe whilst it continues to stick its head in the sand on Islamofascism.