The Charlie Hebdo attack is a reminder that blasphemy laws have no place in modern society

There is a difference between religious persecution and religious criticism, writes Jemimah Steinfeld. To conflate the two is not only dangerous, it also means we infantilise more moderate thinkers, imposing outrage where there is none

Ten years ago today, 12 Charlie Hebdo workers were murdered at their Paris office by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, after the satirical magazine published a series of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

It was 2015 – a different decade. And France – a different country. But the violent impulses that gave rise to the slaughter are alive in Britain today.

Consider this: for almost four years a teacher from West Yorkshire has been in hiding simply because he showed his students cartoon images of the prophet Muhammad. In March 2021, he was suspended from Batley Grammar School following protests around his religious studies classes, before being forced into hiding because of death threats.

Consider also this: in 2022 film screenings of The Lady of Heaven, which is about the daughter of the prophet Muhammad and depicts his image, were cancelled across the UK, following safety concerns for staff at Cineworld.

Rather than decrying these instances, our response has been meek and mild. In some instances, politicians have even edged far too close to the reactionary side.

Last November, MP Tahir Ali asked in Prime Minister’s Questions whether prime minister Keir Starmer would “commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”. (Starmer neither rejected the proposal nor agreed to it in response.)

To be fair to Ali, he was raising the issue of hate crimes against Muslims as part of Islamophobia Awareness Month. Any reasonable person can get behind the desire for less hate in society and less division, which was Ali’s starting point.

The summer riots showed just how nasty it is out there for religious minorities, especially Muslims. But the idea that tolerance can be fostered in the form of more laws to define permitted and unpermitted speech and expression is a fallacy. Tolerance is not improved by less tolerance, as all these examples painfully show.

This is not just about Islam. A few days prior to Ali’s speech, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had ruled a poster promoting the comedian Fern Brady’s UK and Ireland stand-up tour was “offensive” to Christians. The advert, which was placed on the Sky News website, depicted Brady as the Virgin Mary, squirting breast milk into the mouth of a priest.

The ASA ruling found that it was “likely to be seen as mocking the religious figures shown” and “likely to cause serious offence to some within the Christian faith who saw the ad on the site”. The ad has now been banned and Brady has been warned “to not cause offence on the grounds of religion in future ads”.

Critics rightly called the decision “concerning” and said it “infantilised Christians by presuming offence on their behalf”. The latter point is particularly salient; Brady herself had a religious upbringing and the problem highlighted by her case is that we are giving power to the most reactionary groups and leaders to represent communities. We’re not just silencing secular people, we are silencing those with faith.

Each religion contains a plurality of voices, beliefs and practices, and yet it’s typically the most traditional, conservative or orthodox who make the most noise, speaking over the more moderate in an attempt to take a flawed moral high ground. Allowing one side to set the benchmark of acceptable speech or practice is a dangerous path. It creates an inequity where only one group is permitted to critique the other.

I have experience here. I’m a liberal Jew who was raised in the Orthodox tradition. I’ve constantly been told to conceal aspects of my lifestyle and my beliefs out of fear that I could offend the more religious, as if their choices were somehow superior.

I also have enough anecdotes in my role at Index on Censorship to tell you we should all be worried about the direction of travel. A politically charged, religious right is on the rise.

In 2023, we devoted a magazine to this trend and showed how all-encompassing it was. We highlighted how Christian conservatives in the USA had helped overturn Roe v Wade; how Pakistan had extended its already harsh blasphemy laws; how religious conservatives in Israel allied with Benjamin Netanyahu to try to neuter the Supreme Court; how Denmark had passed a law to make improper treatment of the Quran or Bible a criminal offence punishable by up to two years in prison.

The magazine was published in the wake of the brutal attacks on Salman Rushdie, which saw him lose an eye. It was published in the same year that four pupils in the UK were suspended from a West Yorkshire secondary school after they damaged a copy of the Quran.

The UK does not have institutional secularism. Our head of state is, after all, head of the church. But we do have laws that protect and promote free speech and that outlaw punishment for critiquing religions. Blasphemy was abolished as an offence in England and Wales in 2008.

Though Labour has controversially paused the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, faith minister Lord Khan has made some positive noises in this area.

In September, Lord Khan said that the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for British Muslims’ proposed definition of Islamophobia was “not in line” with the Equality Act 2010. As was pointed out by the Humanists, it failed to distinguish between prejudice against people and legitimate criticism of beliefs. Khan emphasised the government’s commitment to tackling hate crimes while emphasising the importance of free speech, showing that the two need not be in conflict – all of which brings me back to today’s grim anniversary.

Religious persecution is all too real in the UK right now and absolutely must be fought; freedom of belief is a basic right that must be protected. At the same time, protection must extend to those who want to critique religion. No one should feel unsafe practising their faith – nor should they feel unsafe for mocking it.

We owe it to the French victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack to continue making this case – and we owe it to the British school teacher currently in hiding, too.

Jemimah Steinfeld is editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship