The conviction of Hamit Coskun of a public order offence for burning a Quran has today been overturned by Southwark Crown Court. It’s a vital victory for free speech in the UK, as well as for Mr Coskun, and the National Secular Society and the Free Speech Union, which defended him.

It’s a mark of the embattled state of free expression in Britain that it ever came to this point

In February, Hamit Coskun had gone to the Turkish Consulate in Knightsbridge with a copy of the Quran and burnt it, while shouting, ‘Islam is religion of terrorism’. A Muslim man, Moussa Kadri, then emerged from a nearby building and remonstrated with him, before leaving, returning with a knife, and attacking Coskun with it. Outrageously, the fact he was attacked was itself taken as evidence that Coskun’s be

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