Writing in UnHerd, London-based writer Liam Duffy warns about the ongoing and growing threat to free speech in Western democracies posed by what he calls “blasphemy violence” perpetrated by jihadists intent on silencing their critics. The problem, which embodied in last year’s attack on Salman Rushdie in New York, is not going away, but is going to get worse, Duffy warns, writing:
It seems almost certain that more blood will be spilled in the West over blasphemy. Meanwhile, with each new “affair”, the noose around expression is tightened, and people take greater pains to err on the right side of the assassin’s veto. This means that, in effect, well-meaning people and institutions come to accept the logic of the fatwa, but the more we accept it, the lower the bar for extremist allegations drops and, perversely, the more likely violence becomes.