STEPHEN GLOVER: If bigoted fools who burn the Quran are treated differently to bigoted fools who burn the Bible, then we're in big trouble

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What would I think as a Christian if someone burnt a copy of the Bible outside Westminster Abbey?

I would be horrified and sad. I'd think that the person who committed this act of desecration was a bigot.

But I wouldn't want the offender to be arrested, far less prosecuted. I realise that we live in a liberal democracy, not a theocracy. It's wrong to blaspheme another religion, but it shouldn't be a crime.

I suspect most Christians in this country feel the same, though their pre-Enlightenment forebears wouldn't have. Yet I doubt one could say the same of most Muslims.

Burning the Quran and insulting the Prophet Muhammad are regarded as grave offences. That is understandable. But because we live in Britain, not an Islamic caliphate, the law and the authorities shouldn't regard the burning of the Quran as being more serious than the burning of the Bible.

There's just been a case in Manchester that suggests the authorities think otherwise. Last Saturday an apparently mentally unwell man burned a copy of the Quran at the memorial to the Manchester Arena bombing victims. The 47-year-old was filmed tearing pages from the Islamic holy book and setting them alight.

He threw the book into a nearby river and was arrested when police arrived. He told officers he was demonstrating solidarity with an anti-Islam activist in Sweden, who was murdered last week having publicly burned the Quran in 2023.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is reportedly planning to create a 16-person council on Islamophobia

She is lining up former Tory minister and pompous lawyer, Stephen Glover says, Dominic Grieve to lead it

The culprit was taken to court on Monday, where he admitted a racially aggravated public order offence, and is awaiting sentencing.

Nothing justifies his destroying the Quran – not even the fact that, according to his lawyer, his action had been 'triggered' by the death of his daughter in the Israeli conflict. This 'had a significant impact on his mental health'.

I can appreciate that the police probably acted wisely in removing him from the scene, as he might have provoked a retaliation from angry Muslims. But was it right to charge him? Should he end up with a sentence?

Bearing in mind what happened last week to the man who had burned the Quran in Sweden, police were irresponsible to publicise the name of the offender in Manchester, and the borough where he lives, in a post on X.

Here is my question. Can we imagine anyone being arrested, charged and sentenced having burned the Bible? I can't. Can you?

This is what disturbs me. The law is being bent to accommodate the sensibilities of one group of citizens. But if it distinguishes between the burning of the Quran and the Bible – if it accepts that one set of people have a unique right for their religion not to be blasphemed – we are in serious trouble.

On the national stage there was a development this week that threatens to entrench these double standards. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is reportedly planning to create a 16-person council on Islamophobia, and is lining up former Tory minister (and pompous lawyer) Dominic Grieve to lead it.

It's true that, presumably because of the Israeli-Gaza conflict, there has recently been an upsurge of hate crimes against Muslims, with 4,971 incidents recorded between October 7, 2023 and September 30, 2024, the highest total in the past 14 years.

But there has also been a sharp increase in hate crimes, as a result of the same war, against Jewish people in our country. Ms Rayner has admittedly undertaken to set up a perhaps unwanted council on anti-Semitism.

But what about the rights of the British Sikh community, some of whom feel they are on the receiving end of hate crimes and abuse? Come to that, a few Christians feel persecuted and discriminated against by officialdom.

Prioritising one group over all others is divisive. The new council on Islamophobia could do a lot of social damage. Its prescriptions might lead to reasonable criticisms of Islam becoming unlawful.

Among the 16 candidates shortlisted for the council is Qari Asim, a Leeds imam dismissed as a government adviser in 2022 after he supported calls for a ban on Lady Of Heaven, a film about the Prophet's daughter.

Dominic Grieve is himself hardly a neutral party. He wrote a foreword to a controversial all-party parliamentary group's report in 2018 that set out a definition of Islamophobia intended to be legally binding. It was subsequently adopted by the Labour Party but rejected by the Tory government.

According to the parliamentary group, its definition of Islamophobia would prevent 'negative attitudes that would not be classed as crimes by police'. That sounds coercive to me.

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A legal definition, said the group, was 'required in order to bring about a transformation in social etiquette'. It should set 'appropriate limits to free speech' when talking about Muslims, and create 'tests... for ascertaining whether contentious speech is indeed reasonable criticism or Islamophobia masquerading as legitimate criticism'.

Many people rightly regard this overbearing definition as being potentially restrictive of free speech. They include enlightened Muslims such as former Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, who is concerned that Angela Rayner is going to 'rubber stamp' a defective definition of Islamophobia.

Dr Taj Hargey, director of the Oxford Institute for British Islam, told the Daily Telegraph: 'It is astounding that an unpopular Labour Party is seeking to sacrifice free expression just to placate Islamic fundamentalists.'

Even without a legal definition, there are countless extremists who discern Islamophobia everywhere. After Sir Keir Starmer visited the South Wales Islamic Centre in October 2023, he called for 'all hostages to be released [and] more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza'.

The Muslim Association of Britain responded on X: 'The fact that Keir Starmer thought it appropriate to visit a mosque and demand the release of hostages is deeply offensive and Islamophobic.'

Imagine where Angela Rayner's new council could take this country. Why is she proposing to foist on us a legal definition of Islamophobia that would undermine free speech and create social divisions by favouring one group over everyone else?

Her motives appear to me mainly low and political. Last May, only weeks before the election, a video circulating on social media showed Rayner pleading for the support of Muslim voters in her Ashton-Under-Lyne constituency who were critical of Labour's stance on Israel's war with Hamas.

This supposedly progressive woman was apparently speaking to an all-male audience, save for one white female standing near the door, probably a member of her team.

In 2019, of all Muslims who voted, 80 per cent backed Labour. Last July this figure fell to just over 60 per cent as a result of the party's position on the Gaza war. In five of the seven seats it lost, there was a sizeable Muslim minority. The Muslim population is rising quickly in many parts of the country, and Labour wants to attract as many of its votes as possible.

This is what it has come to. The behaviour of the authorities in Manchester may be a foretaste of what lies ahead.

Labour is preparing to sacrifice free speech, and give Muslims privileges denied to the rest of us, in the shabby cause of electoral advantage.