I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about freedom of expression in relation to religion or belief systems;
and for connected purposes.

I do not believe that Mohammed was a Prophet sent by God. I do not accept the instructions he said he received from the Archangel Gabriel. I do not accept that the Sunna, or body of Islamic Laws, has any relevance to me. I respect the religious beliefs of others, but I do not mind if Mohammed is satirised, criticised or mocked. I am not a Muslim, and I choose not to live by the moral codes set out by Islam. I am a Christian, and I should make it clear that I do not think anybody should be prosecuted for satirising, criticising or mocking Jesus either.

England and Wales abolished blasphemy laws in 2008, and Scotland abolished them in 2021, but even then, those laws had not been used for decades. The last blasphemy trial took place in 1977, and the state has not brought a public prosecution for blasphemy in more than a century, but now, blasphemy laws are back. I have been advised not to refer to two high-profile cases of people being arrested, charged and prosecuted for causing harassment, alarm or distress to Muslims or even, nonsensically, to Islam itself. While I will keep my speech to the conceptual, I invite the House to recall that there are real examples of what I raise in the criminal justice system right now.

The issue is the way that sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 are being used—far beyond the intent of Parliament—to police what we can and cannot say about Islam. I will come to the details of sections 4 and 5, but first I want to say something about the intent of the Public Order Act. The long title of the Act makes it clear that its purpose was to abolish some common law and statutory offences to make way for new offences relating to public order. Nowhere in the Second Reading debate from 1986 did anybody raise the need to protect religions or followers of religions from offence. The context of the Act was football hooliganism and the riots in Brixton and Broadwater Farm.

It is true that part III of the Act created new offences relating to racial hatred, and this was amended to include religious hatred by the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. However, section 29J of the Public Order Act, to which we will return, says:

“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”.

We can therefore be confident that the Public Order Act, even as amended, was never intended to become a blasphemy law.

That obvious conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the controversies regarding blasphemy and Islam in this country began two years after its introduction, in 1988, with the publication of “The Satanic Verses”. Since that year, and the protests and fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie, our public conversation about Islam has been limited through a mixture of self-censorship and more official restrictions, such as the definition of Islamophobia accepted by many public bodies. These restrictions are motivated not by a desire to avoid offence—consider the criticism and mockery made of other religions—but by fear of a violent response by those who are offended.

Some say public order offences are not the same as a blasphemy law, and that it can be legitimate to prosecute somebody for saying something that might cause wider disorder. Perhaps in some circumstances that may be so, but we should interrogate this line of thinking. First, the Crown Prosecution Service gave the game away by charging one man with causing “distress” to the “religious institution of Islam”, which is pretty much the dictionary definition of blasphemy. Secondly, twisting the law to make a protestor responsible for the violent reaction of those who will not tolerate the opinions of others is wrong; it destroys our freedom of speech. Some argue that although this may be regrettable, it is now an unavoidable consequence of the multicultural society in which we live today.

By this logic, the state must police the boundaries between different ethnic and religious groups to avoid disorder, but we should be clear that that means state intrusion and a loss of liberty on some occasions, and mob rule on others. This is the very essence of the two-tier policing row we have seen recently: rough justice for those belonging to identity groups that play by the rules, and freedom from justice for those belonging to groups willing to take to the streets and threaten violence. This is the logic of using the Public Order Act to prohibit us from saying what we like about a religion. A person may be found guilty because of the violent reaction of those offended by their actions.

From Sir Salman Rushdie to the Batley teacher still in hiding with his family, the threat of violence is what lies behind these new blasphemy laws. Perhaps we should not be surprised. There are at least 14 Muslim-Majority countries where the penalty for blasphemy or apostacy is death, and we have significant diaspora populations from many of them. With the number of people here who came from those countries growing and the increasing assertiveness of organised political Islam in Britain, this is a problem that seems likely only to get more severe. But the answer is not to surrender to the mob; it is to hold the line, and that is why today I bring forward this Bill.

I said earlier that section 29J of the Public Order Act protects “criticism”, “insult” and even “abuse” of

“religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents”.

However, that applies only to part III of the legislation, because part III introduced offences relating to racial hatred, later amended to include religious hatred. Nobody thought sections 4 and 5, which in part I of the Act make it an offence to cause “harassment, alarm or distress” by using

“threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” would be used to criminalise the expression of opinions about religious belief.

This Bill would therefore extend the scope of section 29J to the whole Public Order Act—thus preventing the use of sections 4 and 5 as a de facto blasphemy law—and would apply section 29J also to section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. In so doing, this Bill would restore free speech as it applies to religion in England and Wales. It would stop the police, prosecutors and judges from creating a blasphemy law from legislation that was never passed for that purpose. It would send the strongest powerful message from this place, where political power legitimately and democratically resides, that this country will not tolerate intimidation, violence or censorship, that there will be no special treatment here for Islam, and that there will be no surrender to the thugs who want to impose their beliefs and culture on the rest of us.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Nick Timothy, John Cooper, Dr Luke Evans, Mr Richard Holden, Robert Jenrick, Rupert Lowe, Rebecca Paul, Jack Rankin, Sir Alec Shelbrooke, Bradley Thomas, Tom Tugendhat and Sir Gavin Williamson present the Bill.

Nick Timothy accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July, and to be printed (Bill 257).