Introduction

Abstract

In 1990, as the controversy over The Satanic Verses rumbled on, Simon Lee published a brave little book called The Cost of Free Speech, which ran against the grain of a liberal consensus that saw no merit whatsoever in the Muslim protests against the novel. In the Preface, he wrote, ‘so many of those who purport to value free speech betray their ideals by failing to analyse exactly why freedom of expression is important, or from whom threats to free speech arise, or when it is wrong to exercise the right to free speech’. He went on to state his belief that ‘free speech is under threat mostly from ourselves and, in particular, from our refusal to face up to the weaknesses in our own reasoning and to changes in the world’.¹