Here in the UK we like to think of ourselves as belonging to the ‘Free World’. You’d think we’d have the freedom to burn books, for instance (so long as they belong to us, of course – burning other people’s books would amount to criminal damage).

Hamit Coskun thought he would have that right, when he set fire to a book outside the Turkish consulate in London, by way of a protest against the imposition of Islamic rules in Turkey. It seems he was wrong, as yesterday he was convicted, under the Public Order Act, of a ‘public order offence’. Actually, it was a ‘religiously aggravated public order offence’. Because the book he set light to was, of course, that masterpiece of compassion and reason, the quran.

In Islamic countries people don’t generally have the right to criticise religion. In Pakistan, for instance, a well-used method of destroying your enemies is to claim they said something nasty about ‘the prophet’, and then you can round up a posse, chase them down, and string them up from the nearest tree, secure in the knowledge the police will just stand by and watch. In Iran, Afghanistan, and others, the police will do the hard work for you.

But in the ‘Free World’, surely things are different? Surely we have the right to criticise religion? Surely the law is framed to protect individuals, not ideologies? Apparently not. Hamit Coskun, during his protest, was attacked by a man wielding a knife and threatening to kill him. But it seems that in our ‘Free World’ crimes like ‘carrying an offensive weapon’ (interesting the different meaning applied to that word ‘offensive’), or ‘intent to kill’ pale into insignificance compared to the ‘crime’ of causing someone to be offended. In one of many ironies, it was the reaction of this dangerous psychopath that sealed the conviction, in that it was used as proof Hamit’s actions had threatened public order. Because in Britain today it appears people are no longer responsible for their actions, if they can show that something has caused them to be offended.

Wearing my Literarylad hat, I find myself wondering what would have happened if a copy of one of Jane Austen’s books, or William Shakespeare’s plays were to be burned publicly. Could us literary afficionados complain it had caused us ‘offence’, and have the person doing the burning arrested? Or would we have to beat them up a little, just to prove their act had threatened public order?

We know that in other, less enlightened parts of the world, religion is so privileged as to be exempt from criticism. But in a healthy society ideologies not only can, but should be challenged. Burning an ideological document is a fairly obvious way of expressing dislike of that ideology, or how it’s being used (just as an Iranian might burn the British flag in order to express anger at British interference in the Middle East). Our society, I would argue, is anything but healthy.

What are we doing to protect the right and freedoms that were so hard won by our forebears (how many bears, do I hear you ask?)? We should be out on the streets carrying out mass burnings of religious books, from the quran to the bible, and any others we can find, to show we’re not going to stand for this withdrawal of our rights.

We need to use our rights, to ensure they can’t be taken away by popularist right-wing despots like Putin, Trump, Oban. Or Starmer.

But what will we do?

Yes, you guessed it; absolutely nothing!