What is called “offence to a community” is usually a struggle within communities. There are hundreds of thousands, within Muslim communities in the west and in Muslim-majority countries across the world, challenging religious-based reactionary ideas and institutions – writers, cartoonists, political activists, daily risking their lives in facing down blasphemy laws, standing up for equal rights and fighting for democratic freedoms.

The unwillingness of liberals to stand up for basic liberal principles, their readiness to betray progressives within minority communities, nurtures reactionaries, both within Muslim communities and outside it. The more society gives licence for people to be offended, the more people will seize the opportunity to feel offended. And the more deadly their outrage will become.