A women’s rights campaigner has been charged by the Metropolitan Police for posts on X about Islam.
Kellie-Jay Keen received the charge under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. The posts were made on June 23 and June 25, and the charge, as Keen read it out in a video, is that “between the 23rd and the 25th of June, sent by means of public electronic communications network, a message that was grossly offensive.”
Keen is due to enter a plea at Westminster Magistrates Court on December 4 at 10am. She announced the charge in a video on October 30.
The Communications Act 2003 is one of Britain’s many censorship laws that are often used to prosecute people for speech-related “crimes” online. Section 127(1) makes it an offense to send a message that is “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character” using a public electronic communications network. The penalty can be up to six months in prison, a fine, or both.
The problem with this legislation is that “grossly offensive” is not defined in the act. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has some guidance on this, saying that these are “ordinary English words.”
This means that the courts will decide on a case-by-case basis what speech is grossly offensive. But the CPS also says that the offense is committed when the message is sent, regardless of whether it is received by anyone.
No one is alleging that Keen threatened anyone in her posts, so the “menacing” part of the legislation does not apply here. The charge is about criticizing a religion, and doing it in terms that are apparently offensive to some.
In a post on her Substack in September, Keen wrote, “We do not have a blasphemy law in this country, and we should be extremely wary of recreating one through public order or communications offenses.”
The Free Speech Union (FSU), which is defending Keen, said, “In a free society, no religion or cultural practice should be immune from criticism.”
Keen has not revealed which of her posts is the subject of the charge, but in August, she recorded a phone call with a Met police officer who read out three of them, from June 23 and 25.
One was a comment on a video that purported to show Muslims in Manchester. Keen’s post read, “There’s nothing about this scene that doesn’t scream backward regressive sub normal culture.”
Another was a video clip of Baroness Sayeeda Warsi in the House of Lords warning about funding to “instigate and spread anti-Muslim tropes, racism, and division.” Keen commented, “No one needs foreign money to understand the threat Islam poses to every last one of us.”
There was also a longer post listing grievances against Islam, such as treatment of women.
When the officer was asked who the crime was against, he replied, “somebody who’s read those tweets has taken offense to them and made the report.”
The officer also revealed that the case had gone to the CPS “for early advice,” and that if Keen would not come in for an interview, “yes it would be proportionate to arrest.”
Keen attended a voluntary interview in September, and said that the police had at first looked into other possible offenses, but then “they’ve charged me with something else.”
We have been reporting about Kellie-Jay Keen’s cases for years – in 2022, Wiltshire Police sent two officers to her home over a YouTube video after a viewer complained; the force later admitted its response was “not wholly proportionate.”
The Big Brother Watch group has counted at least 62,199 arrests over five years under Britain’s online and phone speech laws, including Section 127, with 18,510 people charged and 12,292 convicted.
Keen is not the only person to have had run-ins with the police for criticizing Islam. In fact, the Free Speech Union says that such cases are now the biggest category in its casework, and have “doubled.”
You don’t have to agree with a single word Keen has written to see the problem here: a criminal offense with no definition, triggered by one person’s complaint, now reaches opinions about a religion.
The case against Keen will test whether criticism of Islam is considered free speech or a crime in the UK. Every prosecution of this kind – regardless of the outcome – is a tool used to teach the rest of the population to keep quiet.
