Many had warned that Britain would soon have ‘blasphemy laws by the back door’. And so it came to pass on Monday, when Hamit Coskun was found guilty of a religiously aggravated public-order offence for setting fire to the Koran. Yet while there has been justified outrage at the decision, there remains a failure to grasp the true meaning of this landmark verdict. It represents not merely the return of blasphemy law by the back door, but also the advancement of ‘hard multiculturalism’ through the front door.
