Blasphemy laws

In particular, the Public Order Act 1986 has now been used to charge people with acts deemed offensive to some religious groups, which we believe goes against the intention of Parliament when the religious hatred parts of that Act were drafted. If the Public Order Act can be interpreted in a way that criminalises expression that was supposed to be protected, the law needs to be amended.

We also want to see implementation of the recommendations from The Khan Review: Threats to Social Cohesion and Democratic Resilience and Lord Walney’s review on Protecting our Democracy from Coercion in relation to blasphemy-motivated incitement to violence. Together, these recommendations would improve intelligence gathering on blasphemy-related incitement and violence, protect victims of blasphemy accusations, and provide statutory guidance for schools on managing blasphemy-related incidents.

Further, Northern Ireland still has blasphemy laws on its statute books. Even though a prosecution for blasphemy has not occurred since 1855, they can still be invoked at any time. And the existence of blasphemy laws in liberal democracies – even unused – can and have been used by authoritarian states to justify the repressive enforcement of their own blasphemy laws. We campaign for the repeal of blasphemy laws internationally (including as part of Humanists International’s End Blasphemy Laws coalition) and in Northern Ireland.

In depth

The rights to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) and to freedom of expression are mutually reinforcing. The exchange of ideas is necessary for a plural, tolerant society to flourish because it allows for religious hatred to be challenged. These rights exist to protect people from undue interference in expressing their beliefs, from discrimination, and from other forms of harm. They do not protect ideas or objects, nor do they protect people from feeling insulted when their ideas – including their religion or beliefs – are challenged.

However, blasphemy laws do just that. They stifle not only the right to freedom of expression but the right to FoRB itself. FoRB doesn’t only protect those who hold religious beliefs. It protects humanists and atheists to hold and express their beliefs too.

The United Nations’ Rabat Plan of Action is the most comprehensive and authoritative document produced to date on the relationship between freedom of expression and FoRB, including the extent to which ‘offensive’ expression on grounds of religion can be protected or prohibited. It is highly regarded by the UN Human Rights Council, the UN General Assembly, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination as well as UN special mandate holders. The threshold it sets is necessarily high to prevent the criminalisation of even hostile criticism of religion or belief, but low enough to make sure adherents are not prevented from manifesting their beliefs through abusive attacks. The Plan identifies a six-part threshold test for criminal incitement: (1) the social and political context, (2) the status of the speaker in society and to whom the expression is directed, (3) the intent of the speaker, (4) the content and manner of the expression, (5) the reach of the expression, and (6) likelihood of causing imminent harm. Significantly, the plan says that blasphemy laws should be repealed to avoid stifling healthy debate and dialogue about religion, and suppressing the right to FoRB itself.

Blasphemy in Britain

For this reason, blasphemy laws were repealed in England and Wales in 2008 and Scotland in 2024. Further, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, which amended the Public Order Act 1986 to include (among other things) the crime of religious hatred, states:

‘Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.’

Similarly, Section 9(b) of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 states that, for the purposes of offenses of stirring up hatred, behaviour or material cannot be considered threatening or abusive solely on the basis that is involves or includes:

‘discussion or criticism relating to, or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule or insult towards—
(i) religion, whether religions generally or a particular religion,
(ii) religious beliefs or practices, whether religious beliefs or practices generally or a particular religious belief or practice,
(iii) the position of not holding religious beliefs, whether religious beliefs generally or a particular religious belief,

Despite this, in recent years we have seen a pattern of teachers, students and protesters being censored, harassed, threatened, or even arrested over minor differences of opinion, differences of taste, or differing attitudes towards religion, religious ideas or religious artefacts. Adverts have been banned and humanist student societies have been unreasonably censored, for risk of causing religious offence.

Public order offences

We are concerned that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is using the Public Order Act in novel ways to circumvent the free speech protections created by the Racial and Religious Hatred Act. Specifically, it is prosecuting people under parts of the Act to which the free speech protections do not apply.

Manchester Quran burning (2025)

In February 2025, a man was arrested in Manchester after footage of him tearing out and burning pages of a Quran was live-streamed on social media. The man told officers he was demonstrating in solidarity with Salwan Momika, who had been murdered in Sweden a few days earlier, the night before the delivery of the verdict in his criminal trial for four separate Quran-burning incidents. He was charged with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words or disorderly behaviour’ to cause religious aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress against a named individual under section 31(1)(b) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (CDA), the religiously-aggravated version of section 4A of the Public Order Act (POA). At Manchester Crown Court, the man originally pleaded guilty and the court heard how he had suffered poor mental health following the death of his daughter in the war in Gaza. Since then, he has withdrawn his guilty plea, and is now awaiting trial.

While we cannot comment on the intent or the motivation of the man in question, there is no clarity whether the actions deemed to be ‘threatening’, ‘abusive’, or ‘insulting’ were the tearing out and burning pages of the Quran itself, or whether there was further context by which to conclude that he had the intent to cause harassment, alarm or distress. Without such intent, there is no crime committed.

London Quran burning (2025)

Also in February 2025, Hamit Coskun, a half-Kurdish and half-Armenian man from Turkey, burned a Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in London. He said he did it in protest of the President of Turkey for failing to uphold Turkey’s secular constitution. But in June the Magistrates’ Court convicted him of a public disorder offence, likely to cause harassment, alarm, or distress, that was motivated at least in part by hostility towards members of a religious group under section 31(1)(c) of the CDA, the religiously-aggravated version of section 5 of the POA. His actions were found to be motivated at least in part by hostility to Muslims due to comments he made in his police interview that were prejudicial towards Muslims. As a result, the judge found that the defendant had a ‘deep-seated’ hatred of not just Islam but also its followers, and that it was not possible to separate the two. We disagreed with that decision, and were therefore pleased when his conviction was overturned by the Crown Court in October 2025. CPS pursued the case at the High Court, but its appeal was rejected and Coskun’s acquittal upheld.

When handing down its judgment, the Crown Court affirmed that the burning of a Quran is not a crime in and of itself as there is no actual victim of hostility on a racial or religious basis. In this case, Coskun’s conduct was found not to be aimed at a specific person or specific people. The Turkish Embassy is a known political building and is therefore a reasonable place to protest. The defendant was by himself so could not be said to be intimidating. No passersby were scared into running away. Further, after Coskun burned the Quran he was attacked by a man who took offence to his actions. The criminal behaviour of that man was found not to make Coskun’s actions criminal. Nonetheless CPS continue to pursue his conviction.

We unequivocally condemn acts of religious hatred and harassment, and we find the defendant’s views expressed in the police interview to be abhorrent. Nevertheless, given that the defendant did not express these views publicly in relation to the incident, the judgment does raise concerns. In particular, we consider an illustrative case of an ex-Muslim, who may hold prejudicial views about their former community because of their experiences, may find themselves more liable to conviction in a case like this, even if those views are not publicly expressed.

It should not be a crime to burn the Quran. These prosecutions undermine the repeal of blasphemy laws enacted in Britain, and contradict the Government’s reassurances that there are no blasphemy laws in the UK. If the Public Order Act can be interpreted in this way, it needs amending such that no section can be used to criminalise blasphemy.

Blasphemy-related harassment

The two Quran-burning incidents also raise concerns about blasphemy-related harassment. We are deeply concerned by the decision to name both men in the media and on social media. This presents a risk to their long-term safety and we question whether this was necessary. The threats received by the teacher at Batley Grammar School and the pupils in Wakefield in recent years (see below) should have been a clear indicator to CPS to exercise caution in naming the accused in such cases.

In fact, Coskun himself was attacked with a knife during his protest, for which he was taken to hospital before being arrested. We regularly caution that blasphemy-motivated extremism and violence is a growing problem, and that such violence is inevitably encouraged when prohibitions on ‘blasphemy’ are legitimised by authorities.

Faith to Faithless is a programme of Humanists UK that supports those leaving high-control religious groups – sometimes referred to as apostates. For those who stay with their families, there is a risk of physical abuse commonly referred to as so-called honour-based violence. In extreme cases, apostasy or blasphemy can escalate to murder or so-called honour killings. The risk of the reintroduction of laws that restrict so-called blasphemous expression, including the criminal investigations into, or sanctions for, burning a Quran, can embolden abusers, and create deep concern for apostates, especially ex-Muslims.

There have been a number of high-profile examples of blasphemy-related harassment in recent years, where authorities have appeased extreme protesters, rather than protect the victims of harassment.

Batley Grammar School (2021)

In 2021 a teacher at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire used an image of the Prophet Muhammad in a Religious Studies lesson about blasphemy. This led to Muslim parents protesting outside the school. Instead of defending the teacher or investigating credible threats made against him, the school suspended the teacher and apologised ‘unequivocally’ for the use of ‘a totally inappropriate resource’. The incident in Batley showed striking similarities to the murder of Parisian school teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded following similar accusations. Even after an independent investigation found no deliberate intent to offend and the teacher was reinstated, he has had to remain in hiding as a result of ongoing threats.

Cineworld (2022)

In 2022 the Cineworld chain of cinemas announced it had pulled all screenings of The Lady of Heaven following protests from Muslim groups claiming that the film contains ‘blasphemous’ content. However, the film was scripted from a Shia Muslim perspective, taking a more lenient interpretation of the prohibition of images of the Prophet compared to other Muslim denominations. Its cancellation was therefore a censorship of different theological interpretations of Islam. Cineworld stated that this decision had been made ‘to ensure the safety of [its] staff and customers’. However, appeasing protesters who create an intimidating environment sets a worrying precedent for the future of UK cinema.

Kettlethorpe High School, Wakefield (2023)

In 2023 four pupils at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, were suspended after minor scuffing to a copy of the Quran. While the school found there was ‘no ill intent’, the police initially recorded it as a ‘non-crime hate incident’. It is unclear whether the pupils were suspended before or as a result of pressure from local Muslims, including local councillors and mosque leaders. However, one of the pupils’ mothers appears at a press conference at the local mosque alongside police, apologising for her child’s ‘disrespectful’ behaviour and asking for forgiveness from the community. She also said her child had received threats of violence and had called the police with concerns for his safety, but that she did not wish to press charges.

What we are doing

We are seeking amendments to the Public Order Act such that safeguards for freedom of expression are appropriately used across its provisions. We are doing so through the Crime and Policing Bill currently before Parliament.

We campaign for the implementation of recommendation 10 from The Khan Review: Threats to Social Cohesion and Democratic Resilience:

‘For HMG’s assessment community should ‘[i]Improve assessment and intelligence gathering of blasphemy related incitement and violence, and extreme incidences of freedom-restricting harassment which pose a threat or potential threat to life.’

We’d submitted evidence to the Review and organised roundtables with Faith to Faithless service users to provide first hand testimony to Dame Sara Khan about their experiences of being targeted by extremists and other divisive actors. These experiences are reflected in the term, ‘freedom-restricting harassment’, coined by the Review, that describes ‘threatening, intimidatory or abusive harassment online and/or offline which is intended to make people or institutions censor or self-censor out of fear’.

We also want to see the implementation of recommendation 25 from Lord Walney’s review on Protecting our Democracy from Coercion:

‘The Government should issue statutory guidance on managing blasphemy-related incidents in schools. This should include commitments to upholding teachers’ freedom of expression and not automatically suspending teachers involved in such incidents or revealing their identity. While schools are required to engage with parents, on developing Relationships and Sex Education for example, the guidance should set out that schools are not required to engage with local community groups or religious institutions in managing blasphemy-related incidents or other tensions.’

We had called for precisely such protections to be put in place in the wake of the Wakefield blasphemy incident in 2023. We also led calls for greater support for teaching staff and a more robust defence of freedom of religion or belief, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression following the suspension of a teacher in Batley. We’d called for the Government to ‘Empower state schools to stand up to religious bullying in the community and stop religious leaders from interfering in school curriculum, student life, or discipline’ and welcomed the reflection of this call in the recommendation of Lord Walney’s report.

In 2025 the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group (APPHG) held a meeting on blasphemy laws and called for their end and for freedom of speech to be upheld at home and abroad. MPs and peers heard from Mubarak Bala, the former President of the Nigerian Humanist Association, in his first speech to the UK Parliament after having been freed early from his 24-year jail sentence for blasphemy. Lord Walney also gave an overview of his review’s findings and recommendations.

We welcome MHCLG’s definition on anti-Muslim hostility which strikes the appropriate balance of restricting speech that is harmful to people – whether they are Muslims or perceived to be Muslims – while rightly protecting speech that is critical of Islam as a religion. We believe this definition recognises the rights of former Muslims who may wish to talk about why they chose to leave Islam. Ex-Muslims are also frequently affected by anti-Muslim hatred themselves, as they may be perceived as Muslim because of their ethnicity, background, or name – and we believe this definition recognises this experience as well. We had briefed the Working Group on Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia Definition on the importance of upholding protections for freedom of expression in any definition it produces. We therefore welcome the explanatory notes that must be read alongside the guidance which highlights the importance of freedom of expression in a thriving society, and affirms that ‘criticisms of a religion or belief, including Islam, or of its practices, or critical analyses of its historical development’ are protected speech, as is ‘ridiculing or insulting a religion or belief, including Islam, or portraying it in a manner that some of its adherents might find disrespectful or scandalous’.

We continue to challenge the censorship of so-called ‘blasphemous’ expression across a variety of settings from advertisements to university campuses.

Blasphemy laws in Northern Ireland

Blasphemy and blasphemous libel remain criminal offences in Northern Ireland, both as a common-law offence and underpinned in legislation by four different Acts, which also used to apply in England and Wales but have been repealed. The Criminal Libel Act 1819, the Libel Act 1843, the Newspaper Libel and Registration Act 1881, and the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888, all remain in force in Northern Ireland. These Acts need to be amended to omit references to ‘blasphemy’ to remove these crimes from the statute books.

For both the common law and statutory offences, judges have discretion over sentencing and can impose either a fine or imprisonment, or both. While the common law offence focuses just on Christianity, the statutory offences, although devised with Christianity in mind, do not specify a particular religion, so theoretically could apply to other religions as well.

The last prosecution for blasphemy occurred pre-partition in 1855. But these laws can still be invoked at any time, as demonstrated in Denmark in 2017 when blasphemy laws were invoked after 46 years of being unused. In the same year, Humanists UK patron Stephen Fry was investigated for potentially breaking the Republic of Ireland’s blasphemy law which had not been used since it was passed in 2009. In 2020, blasphemy ceased to be a criminal offence in the Republic of Ireland after the public voted overwhelmingly for blasphemy to be removed from the Irish Constitution.

Further, repressive states also use the very existence of blasphemy laws in liberal democracies – even so-called ‘dead letter laws’ – to legitimise their own severe and actively used laws. Pakistan, on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), took its definition of blasphemy directly from Ireland’s (now repealed) provisions on blasphemous libel when calling for international restrictions on ‘defamation of religion’ despite the absence of any prosecutions at that time. In his first speech to the UK Parliament after having been freed early from his 24-year jail sentence for blasphemy, Mubarak Bala, the former President of the Nigerian Humanist Association called on the UK and western governments to repeal their blasphemy laws and explained that when he was arrested he was told ‘even the British have blasphemy laws’.

Therefore, even if a law has not recently been used to prosecute an individual, its maintenance on statute books has negative consequences for human rights around the world.

We support the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission’s recommendation from its 2025 Annual Report that

‘the Department of Justice, working with the NI Executive and NI Assembly, introduces and implements legislation to abolish the common law offence of blasphemy and blasphemous libel to ensure compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 19 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.’

It has repeated this recommendation every year since 2018.

What we are doing

In 2019, we launched a campaign to repeal Northern Ireland’s blasphemy laws, encouraging members to contact their Members of the Legislative Assembly asking them to support the campaign. Almost 1,000 emails were sent. As a result, Sinn Féin, the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Alliance Party, the Green Party, and the People Before Profit Alliance are committed to repeal, with the UUP still developing policy on the matter, and only the DUP opposed.

Northern Ireland Humanists has worked with Justice Minister Naomi Long to secure repeal of Northern Ireland’s blasphemy laws. In 2021, the Department of Justice had hoped to bring about repeal through a forthcoming Bill. However, for the Bill to go ahead with enough time to be considered by the Assembly, the focus had to be narrowed to reform laws relating to sexual offences and protections for trafficking victims only. This meant that blasphemy was no longer within the scope of the Bill. Movement on the repeal slowed while the Northern Ireland Assembly was on a 24-month hiatus until 2024.

Since the Assembly’s return, we have continued to meet with MLAs and have written to the Committee for Justice to take steps towards securing the repeal of blasphemy laws and to support any opportunities that arise. That opportunity was presented by Alliance MLA and Justice Committee member Connie Egan, who tabled an amendment to the Justice Bill in February 2026. Northern Ireland Humanists welcomed the amendment which seeks to repeal the common law offence of blasphemy in Northern Ireland.

Appendix: Past work on this issue

• In 2024, we responded to the Office for Students’ consultation on proposed regulatory advice and other matters relating to freedom of speech to help universities and students’ unions comply with their duties under new regulations. We broadly supported the content of the draft guidance as rooted in well-established human rights principles of what constitutes free speech within the law. Importantly, the draft guidance is clear that ‘free speech’ includes ‘lawful speech that may be offensive to some’. In responding to the consultation, the Office for Students maintained its position on established human rights principles and affirmed its support for open debates between groups as a means to foster good relations, warning that the suppression of lawful speech is more likely to create antagonism. These principles remained largely in place in the published guidance.
• In 2022, Northern Ireland Humanists responded to the Department of Justice’s consultation on hate crime legislation in Northern Ireland. As well as calling for the repeal of blasphemy laws. Blasphemy was not specifically addressed in the Department of Justice’s Phase One report. It did however abandon the suggestion to include additional attitudes of ‘bias, prejudice, bigotry and contempt’ as indicators of hate amid ‘concerns about the need to protect freedom of expression and not criminalise disagreement’ in line with Northern Ireland Humanists’ response.
• In 2020, we welcomed the Scottish Government’s announcement that it would abolish the common law offence of blasphemy in Scotland as part of a modernisation of its hate crime laws. We supported HSS in its call to include humanists in protections against hate crime and for the Bill to protect the right to freedom of expression with regards to discussions of religious beliefs. We helped them bring together over 20 leading individuals and organisations from the world of arts, journalism, literature, comedy, politics and human rights to publish a joint letter to the Scottish Government calling for changes to the draft Bill, to ensure that protections against hate crime do not limit the right to artistic expression or freedom of expression with regards to discussions of religious beliefs. In 2021, we celebrated the passage of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill through its final stage of debate, which repealed blasphemy laws in Scotland when it came into force in 2024.
• In 2019, we launched a petition in reaction to proposals by the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) to expand its ban of ‘offensive’ advertising, including adverts deemed religiously offensive, in its two codes.
• In 2018, we secured comprehensive new guidance on protecting free speech at universities from parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) after we called for this guidance to be created in written evidence to the Committee’s inquiry. Our Chief Executive, Andrew Copson, called for the same when he appeared as a witness and gave oral evidence. We were the only group to call for this guidance to be produced. The following year, this was followed up by longer guidance by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) – something that the JCHR had called for. However, we were concerned that some aspects of the guidance in fact stifled free speech. The guidance had initially included an example that said that whenever an atheist society holds an event on the existence of God, it must ‘ensure a range of views were being presented’. We secured an amendment to instead see it suggested that the university could ‘explor[e] with the society whether an event where a range of views would be expressed was a viable alternative’. But, we believe this is unnecessary and therefore disproportionate.
• In 2016 we responded to an Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) consultation about religion and belief advertising to speak out against the ASA decisions to ban adverts on subjective grounds of being offensive.
• We were instrumental in the abolition of blasphemy laws in England and Wales in 2008. There were, at the time, a number of attempts to prosecute using the blasphemy law, all of which were rejected by the courts. The last was when the High Court rejected a case against BBC Director-General Mark Thompson over the screening of Jerry Springer – The Opera (penned by Stewart Lee, who subsequently became one of our patrons). We we supported amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill to abolish the laws. The government wrote to us to say they were grateful for our support, and Evan Harris MP, who spearheaded the initiative to abolish the laws, thanked us and especially the many people who we arranged to email their MP in the days running up to the Commons vote.
• We lobbied for a number of years on the various stages of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill to help secure vital free speech protections, which mean that the crime of stirring up religious hatred is correctly understood to mean stirring up hatred against people and not criticising, or being offensive to, a religion or belief. From the time the Religious Offences Bill was introduced in 2002, until it finally became the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, we gave written and oral evidence to Parliament on incitement to religious hatred, and briefed parliamentarians.