You can make fun of Jesus, as long as it's not in front of a Muslim audience

Many years ago, Spitting Image, a satirical puppet show broadcast a sketch on Jesus. Christian viewers were offended and wrote in to complain, but the Jesus character remained. The following week Muslim viewers complained, and the sketch was quietly dropped. There is a lesson to be learnt from this. It doesn't take a lot of courage to offend a handful of Christian viewers, but if you really believe in freedom of speech, you won't be scared of offending a lot of Muslims either, it's a risk programmers at Central Television weren't willing to take.

There were two important reasons for celebrating the Lords defeat of the Government's religious hatred bill. One reason was given by Rowan Atkinson in what may have been the most serious speech of his career. He warned the house of Lords:

"the only moderating influence on this legislation will be the Attorney General, who can veto prosecutions. Yet how can the Office of the Attorney General, an instrument of government, be expected to take only a judicial view of cases brought before him and not be influenced by the political ambitions of his employer?"

It is well known, for example that Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary wrote to Muslim voters at election time, warning them about Conservative and Liberal Democrat opposition to the bill. If the bill were to pass, could the Government, under immense pressure from Muslim voters resist the pressure to prosecute.

The other more significant reason for voting down this bill was made by Daniel Finkelstein in the Times. Which is that fear of prosecution is often a more effective weapon than prosecution itself. Although very few people are likely to be prosecuted if the bill passed, businesses, the media, academics, and even private individuals would be scared to say anything that might be deemed offensive, no one will want to run the risk the negative publicity or an embarrassing court case.

But the best reason for opposing this bill is the motivation behind those who are pushing it: They don’t think that religions should be ridiculed. And they don’t think that religions should be criticised or insulted. Lets not forget, that for many immigrants who came to these shores, the reason they came in the first place was to escape this kind of intimidation.