Left-wing Labour Member of Parliament Tahir Ali used Parliamentary question to Prime Minister to call for ban on “desecrations” of texts and prophets, eliciting a positive response from Sir Keir Starmer.
Tahir Ali was representing the interests of the voters of his Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley constituency on Wednesday when he called on the Prime Minister to introduce new rules to ban the “desecrations” of religious texts and “the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”. The remarkable call to re-introduce a blasphemy law in Britain — the country already abolished the archaic legal idea by legislation in 2008 and 2021 — comes amid such pressure seen elsewhere across Europe as hard-won freedom of expression standards backslide.
The Labour MP, who recently had to issue an apology over accusing the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of having “the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands” over Palestine told the Prime Minister that it is Islamophobia Awareness Month, and said desecration caused “hatred” in society.
Ali told the chamber: “Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning the desecration of religious texts including the Quran, despite opposition from the previous government. Acts of such mindless desecration only serve to fuel division and hatred within our society.
“Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecrations of all religious texts, and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer didn’t exactly respond to the question — as is common in Prime Minister’s Questions sessions — but told Ali he accepted the basic premise of his speech. He replied: “Can I agree with him that desecration is awful and should be condemned across the house. We are, as I have said before, committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division including of course Islamophobia in all of its forms.”
Birmingham MP Ali is one of several Labour MPs who saw their majorities slashed in “heavily Muslim areas” — and in some cases even lose their seats — to insurgent pro-Palestine candidates. In Hall Green and Moseley Ali was opposed by two Palestine-focussed independents, including one who had been subjected to a court order banning him from a local school over anti-equality protests.
The two candidates combined got more votes than Labour’s Ali but as they were fighting each other as well as the incumbent, he fared better than some other Labour MPs. The pro-Gaza MPs who did win out against Labour challengers and who now sit in Parliament have since formed an ‘independent’ group with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was expelled from the party over the fallout from their antisemitism scandal.
While the United Kingdom has already abolished blasphemy laws, this pressure to roll back on that progress is reflected elsewhere in Europe where governments are frequently lobbied to enact protections, and particularly for books like the Qur’an. These calls are heard loudest in European countries where politicians and activists have depicted the prophet Mohammed, or burned copies of the Qur’an in public.
Naturally, such acts are controversial. On one hand, the activists involved state aggressive — and sometimes even deadly — responses by individual Muslims to these protests illustrate their underlying point that Islam can tend towards being thin-skinned in the face of criticism and fast to anger in the face of perceived slights. On the other hand, such acts are decried by some as provocative, insensitive, and offensive to the faith, and should consequently be outlawed.
Denmark, for instance, had abolished its 334-year-old blasphemy law in 2017 as part of a broader centuries-long European move towards liberal democracy, but a left-wing government brought the law back in 2023. The law was passed to target the phenomenon of Qur’an burnings and made desecrating holy books illegal.
A government spokesman speaking last year appeared to inadvertently make the burner’s case for them when he said the ban was a matter of national security, saying they harmed the interests of the Danish state abroad and had increased terrorism threats. Former government minister Inger Støjberg called the development a victory for “the unfree, medieval forces in the Middle East”. She said: “They can now see that they can dictate our way of life in Denmark, because we have a government that bows to threats and pressure.”
Sweden has come under immense pressure to bring back centuries-old blasphemy laws it abolished in the 1970s over the course of its attempt to join the NATO alliance, as Turkey was able to veto its membership. Rasmus Paludan, perhaps the most famous — or infamous — Qur’an protester in Europe was jailed in Sweden earlier this year in connection to one demonstration. The ruling is being appealed.