IT WAS nice to have a genuinely meaty debate on Sunday (Radio 4). Hamit Coskun’s conviction for public-order offences after burning a Qur’an outside the Turkish Consulate in London has led to allegations that blasphemy laws are returning by the back door. The fact that Mr Coskun was physically attacked by two people was presented by the district judge as evidence that his conduct was disorderly. I was startled that the BBC’s legal eagle Joshua Rozenberg did not find at least this aspect of the judgment problematic. I also doubt whether a jury would have found Mr Coskun guilty.
Stephen Evans, of the National Secular Society, which funded Mr Coskun’s defence, insisted that a de facto blasphemy law has indeed emerged in the UK, through intimidation and violence. His interlocutor, the Leicester-based media imam Ibrahim Mogra, supported the conviction, but took some time to answer Edward Stourton’s question that this might narrow the scope for criticising religions, before averring any return to a blasphemy law, but saying that any criticism of Islam needed to be “constructive”.
Sunday also featured another sign of the changing religious landscape: Fr Moses McPherson, a Russian Orthodox priest in Texas, who advises young men on masculinity, and thus against waxing, or soup lacking chunks of meat. Despite this silliness, his church was reported to be attracting plenty of young men. Charlotte Thomas, an academic expert on hypermasculinity, said that this was driven by the “comforting certainty” that some churches offered at a time of rapid change.
If young men are seeking masculinity, it might be advisable to offer them healthier varieties, lest they turn to the toxicity offered by the likes of this Christian version of the odious Tate brothers.
Heart and Soul (World Service, Friday) reported on “The Future of the Alawites” from Lebanese Tripoli, to which many Syrian Alawites have fled. While Ahmed al-Sharaa took power promising religious tolerance, this broke down in March when a savage attack on his own forces led to brutal sectarian reprisals that left more than 1000 dead.
Alawism is a heteredox strand of Shi’ism endemic to the Levant, which venerates the Caliph Ali so ardently that many mainstream Muslims suggest that it amounts to polytheism. Traditionally persecuted as heretics, Alawites became privileged in Syria under the nominally secularist dictatorship of the Assad family, themselves Alawites.
An Alawite imam and an articulate young woman put their differences with mainstream Islam down to matters of interpretation, not fundamentals. The accusations of incest and polytheism that they face seem standard fare for condemning minority groups in any context, but the prominence of foreign militias in President al-Sharaa’s Syria, especially Chechens and Uyghurs with little understanding of Levantine Islam’s complexities, seems to be a new and deadly problem facing this much maligned community.
