This is, of course, to miss the blindingly obvious fact that it's not always easy to separate the two ('people' and 'faith') from one another. Beliefs, as we're sure Charles Clarke well knows, have a tendency to get lodged inside people's skulls, and when this happens, it's nigh on impossible to draw a neat distinction between attacking the religion and attacking the people who lay claim to it.
Read the whole thing, but here is the conclusion.
Whether or not the new law is used to silence comedians, academics and angsty playwrights is neither here nor there. The point is that it will almost certainly be used to attack those of us who are openly critical of the way Muslims behave.
The real question has never been whether or not anti-Islamic comments hurt Muslim feelings, but whether Muslim feelings deserve to be hurt.
Australia has already enacted such laws and the first ones convicted were Christians.
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