The creation of avoidable resentment, never mind avoidable suffering, does not seem like a positive good for any social unit; and the assertion of an unlimited freedom to create such resentment does little to recommend ‘liberal’ values and tends rather to strengthen the suspicion that they are a poor basis for social morality and cohesion … We may decide, as on the whole we have decided, that religion should not be protected by law over and above the ways we have just been summarising; but that does not close the moral question of what are the appropriate canons for the public discussion of belief … Rather than assuming that it is therefore only a few designated kinds of extreme behaviour that are unacceptable and that everything else is fair game, the legal provision should keep before our eyes the general risks of debasing public controversy by thoughtless and (even if unintentionally) cruel styles of speaking and acting.

The paradox is that from the Western perspective we frequently see the Muslim world as powerful, aggressive, coherent and threatening. From the other side of the world, the Muslim world – or a great deal of it – sees us as powerful, coherent and threatening in very much the same way. Now, when those are the perceptions, you don’t have a very fertile ground for critical, relaxed, long-term discussions of some legal and cultural issues.