Would you rather live in a society where a man is free to criticise religious practices or one where such a man might be dragged to the public square to be damned and shamed as a blasphemer? For me it’s a no-brainer. It’s the former. I want the freedom to object, as scurrilously as I like, to every pious ritual and godly doctrine. We used to call it ‘freedom of thought’, and our ancestors gave their lives to gift us that most cherished of liberties.

The scandal surrounding Nick Timothy has really horrified me

This is why the scandal surrounding the Conservative MP Nick Timothy has really horrified me. The digital mobbing of the shadow justice secretary merely for criticising the Islamic practice of mass public praying has been profoundly chilling. For bristling at such ritualistic piety and calling it an ‘act of domination’, Timothy has been tarred as racist, a prick, a scumbag and a bigot who’s unfit for public life. ‘Cast him out!’ Keir Starmer essentially barked at Kemi Badenoch in yesterday’s PMQs, as if it were the seventh century and all Koran doubters must be punished with the brutish oblivion of cancellation.

I find it equal parts terrifying and hilarious that we are expected to see Timothy as the bad guy in all this. Are you for real? All he did was give voice to his moral convictions. In response to a clip of mass Muslim prayer at an open iftar in Trafalgar Square, he said such ‘domination of public places’ comes ‘straight from the Islamist playbook’. These spectacles of Islamic devotion feel like a ‘declaration of domination’, he said. ‘Perform these rituals in mosques if you wish,’ he tweeted, but keep them out of ‘our public places’.

Let’s be clear: it is perfectly normal – good, in fact – for individuals to express their beliefs. The truly alien thing, the thing that felt properly un-British, was not Timothy’s tweet but the response to it. The swiftness and ferocity with which so much of the establishment rounded on him was alarming. Like the witchfinders of old, they want this impious scoffer banished from decent society. Seriously, give me a million ‘blasphemous’ tweets over such bloodlust for religious censure any day of the week.

The pointed fingers have come thick and fast. Labour’s deputy leader, Lucy Powell, branded Timothy’s tweet an ‘extreme reaction’ and accused him of whipping up ‘desperate hatred’. The Labour MP Uma Kumaran denounced his ‘blatant Islamophobia’. Everyone is welcome in London, she said, except ‘loud-mouthed racists’ like him. Hound out the heretic! Don’t you just love the Kafkaesque contortionism of a political class that rallies under the banner of ‘inclusivity’ and yet dreams of exiling all mortals who fail to bow to correct-think?

Lib Dem MP Josh Babarinde called Timothy a ‘racist prick’. Come on, what’s worse for public life – a man raising concerns about religious practices or the infantile intolerance of this new intake of politicians who are weirdly hell-bent on ring-fencing Islam from criticism? What Timothy did was good: he ignited public discussion. It’s his tormentors who have taken leave of the realm of decency. Their hollers of ‘Islamophobe!’ have a chilling effect on free society, warning every Briton of the unholy shaming that awaits them if they speak ill of Islam.

Then came the cries for Timothy’s expulsion from politics. His comments were ‘appalling’, said Starmer. Kemi Badenoch should denounce him and sack him, he said. What’s appalling is that it’s 2026 and we have a Prime Minister who thinks critics of religion have no place in public life. Timothy is in tune with England’s great traditions of liberty. Starmer, in contrast, seems determined to import the alien creed of punishing infidels who misspeak about Muhammad’s religion. Sack yourself, mate.

The Timothy storm has exposed the menacing urges behind the ‘Islamophobia’ hysteria. The showy crusaders against ‘Islamophobia’ would have us believe that they’re battling racism when in truth they are punishing people for their beliefs. Worse, they’re strangling free, frank discussion about society itself. It is not ‘phobic’ to raise concerns about public displays of religious fervour. In our secular society with its deep and noble Christian heritage, every one of us should be free to ask if we really want to see Islamic rituals in public places. We must all have the right to ask if such spectacles grate against our secularist traditions and Christian history.

Censorship is the handmaiden of ignorance

Over the past week I’ve seen Muslim men get up from their public prayers and sing the praises of an anti-Semitic tyrant – Ayatollah Khamenei, who they noisily cheered at the Al Quds day gathering. I’ve seen my fellow gym members step around two men who were on their knees mumbling to Mecca. Am I allowed to say I don’t like this? That I fear such ostentatious piety is a snub to the secular society? Or is that racist too?

Once again we are reminded that the poison in the well of civilisation is not the free expression of ideas but the tyrannical urge to crush such free speaking. Censorship is the handmaiden of ignorance. It buries social problems through forbidding us from shining the light of liberty on them. Let Nick speak. Let us all speak.