Is Britain bringing back blasphemy laws?

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is set to create a “council on Islamophobia” amidst turmoil on the streets of England. 

The 16-strong council will advise on drawing up an official government definition for anti-Muslim discrimination, and will provide advice to ministers on tackling Islamophobia. 

The announcement comes days after a man was arrested in Manchester for burning a Koran, and later publicly named by police, despite the risk of threats posed to his life. 

Recently, a Bristol preacher was similarly arrested for even daring to compare Islam and Christianity in public, in answer to a question.

And in Wakefield, Police recorded a “hate incident” against a 14-year-old autistic boy who scuffed a Koran at school. Following death threats, the child was forced into hiding, but police refused to prosecute his tormentors for fear of “escalating” the situation. Instead, his white British mother donned a hijab and begged for forgiveness at the local mosque. 

Before our eyes the State privileges members of one religion while punishing another

The sensitivity afforded to protecting the feelings of the Muslim community could be coloured as kindness and compassion. Yet such a charitable reading of enforced censorship rings hollow when considered the paucity of protections afforded to protecting the feelings of other groups.

Take Christians. Far from being shielded from criticism, Christians have faced discrimination, punishment and arrest at the hands of the British state for expressing their own faith — even to themselves. In November 2022, charitable volunteer Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for praying silently, in her head, on a public street near an abortion facility. She was arrested for “expressing approval or disapproval” of abortion, as well as causing “harassment” and “distress” to abortion service-users via the thoughts in her head. This was despite the fact that the clinic was closed at the time of her prayer — there were no service-users on site to hear her prayer, even if it had been aloud. 

Though fully vindicated in court with support from ADF International, Vaughan-Spruce’s case is not isolated. In October 2024, a Christian army veteran was convicted for praying silently in his head for a few minutes, on a public space across the road from an abortion facility in Bournemouth. Similarly, countless street preachers have been arrested for expressing their Biblically-based beliefs. Nigerian-British preacher Oluwole Ilesanmi was told “nobody wants to listen to that” when he claimed “Jesus is on the way” before being arrested in Southgate, with his Bible removed from him by authorities. And 71-year-old John Sherwood was left bruised after police pulled him from a stepladder to stop him preaching about “two genders, made in the image of God”.

A leaked Home Office memo recently revealed the insider government position that “two tier policing” is a “right-wing extremist narrative”. Yet before our eyes, the State will privilege members of one religion while punishing members of another.

No religion should be banned. Yet no religion should be shielded from criticism either. Britain’s fear of giving offence has gone so far as to put lives in danger on a mass scale. Official inquiries have revealed a fear of being branded “Islamophobic” led to a failure to prosecute large scale “grooming gangs” of dominantly Pakistani-Muslim background across the UK, in a scandal spanning three decades. The results led to countless young girls being brutalised, raped, and even murdered. The intention to steer clear of “Islamophobia” has only inflamed tensions, sullying and endangering the many well-integrated Pakistani-Muslims in the country who had nothing to do with such crimes at all.

Westerners are accustomed to decrying horrific human rights abuses in Middle Eastern countries where “blasphemers” against the Islamic faith are sentenced to death. The UK is hardly there yet — but the creeping principles of “blasphemy bans” are being openly undergirded. UK Muslims have every right to believe in their religion, and to defend their reasons for doing so. They do not have a right to escape all challenge and criticism. Playing favourites has only fanned the flames of decision, rather than sown peace amongst divergent communities.

Free speech is a right hard-fought and easily lost — without which, a society cannot flourish. At this crucial crossroads, the British government should double down on democracy — not import obtuse blasphemy laws through the front door.