Terrorist ideologies suppressing free speech? Yes please

I work at a popular commercial TV company in the UK and as such, I see the company's duty logs. These are the records of all the communications received from the public: comments, complaints, questions... ok, it's mostly complaints. We get all sorts of bizarre complaints about even the most inconsequential detail, inoffensive remark or minor continuity error. However we also receive many communications from people genuinely offended by something aired.

There are certain archetypes that seem to run through these. For example, I've quickly learned that any message beginning "I read today in the Daily Mail that..." can safely be ignored. One such archetype is that of the Indignant Christian. If somebody on one of our shows takes the Lord's name in vain, portrays Jesus in any sort of comic light or, heaven forbid, seriously criticises the Christian faith, we are instantly flooded with the written equivalent of loud tuts and wagged fingers. We are briskly reminded that the church is a large part of Britain's history, that the Queen is the Defender of the Faith, that the viewer has the right not to have their beliefs belittled or their sensibilities offended.

While I personally believe that the ideal of free speech doesn't at all guarantee you the right not to be offended or have your beliefs belittled, and that one should only hold an opinion or belief if one is prepared to either defend it or live with its criticism, I can still understand why we receive these messages. However, there is a specific argument that is sometimes used in these complaints that I find deeply insidious. This argument generally goes something like the following: You shouldn't insult our lord Jesus because it offends us Christians. You wouldn't say that about Muhammad would you?

Now, let's look at the implications of that argument. The suggestion is that we wouldn't criticise Muhammad because the consequences could be too serious: hate campaigns, bombings and fatwas have resulted from such criticism. The modern reluctance to question Islam comes as a result of these terrorist activities which have been carried out by factions of fundamentalists whose aim is exactly that: to silence dissent and enquiry by making the consequences of criticism too great. This ideology of terrorism goes directly against the ideals of free speech that are central to the way of life which we in democratic countries fight to protect.

When someone asserts that we shouldn't criticise Christianity because we wouldn't do the same to Islam, they are implicitly giving their support to that terrorist ideal and forgetting that Islam's present imperviousness to evaluation has been bought with the blood of many innocent victims.

When people decry our society's permissive attitude to making fun of Christianity as against its reluctance to do the same of Islam, they have it the wrong way round. It is good that we are able to say what we like about Christianity because it is on that basis that free speech exists. As soon as a religion succeeds in marking itself out of bounds from jokes, satire or criticism, that religion may win a superficial battle, but it is our very ideal of freedom which bears the consequences of that meretricious victory.