Special pleading  Why are religious creeds given special license to block others freedom of expression? We live in a world of laws, supported by evidence on the basis of what can be perceived in the world around us. This applies in the fields of politics, law, science and others. Only when it comes to religion (and, possibly national identity) do we tolerate arguments made on the basis of unproven belief. There is of course a role for fantasy in life but protests as a result of people pointing out that it is fantasy seems to be taking things a little far.  Nobody appears to be suggesting that the film Innocence of Muslims was anything more than a badly made, ill-conceived, puerile bit of adolescent vitriol. By any reasonable scale it pales into insignificance compared with, for example, blowing up embassies or issuing death threats against foreign nationals [i] .  Were politicians to take action to urge the blocking of free speech on the rather more significant reasons for offence of misrepresentation of scientific data, libel, corruption of legal evidence or the, absolutely routine, misrepresentation of a political position, as President Obama did when calling Google, [ii] they would be written off as a lunatic. However, dress the idea up in a cassock and everyone seems to think that there is a meaningful issue to be discussed. There is no definable difference between saying something inaccurate or (in this case) impolitic about Nero, Plato, Sejong, Al’Khwarizmi or any other historical figure than about Christ, Mohammed or Moses other than the fact that the followers of the last three are more likely to resort to violence. Since when did that become a moral argument?  [i] Bermuda Sun. Obama on Religion. 28 September 2012.  [ii] Greenwald, Glenn, ‘Conservatives, Democrats and the convenience of denouncing free speech’, guardian.co.uk, 16 September 2012,