When Uthman Badar's talk, provocatively titled ‘'Honour killings are morally justified’', was pulled from this year's Festival of Dangerous Ideas event in Sydney, I couldn't help but feel disappointment.

Because even if the sole purpose of Badar's talk was to advocate for the oppression, victimisation and ruthless violence against women, and even if his intentions were in fact to unleash a radical ideology fuelled by prejudice onto unsuspecting Australians, it should not have been cancelled.

The Festival of Dangerous Ideas takes place each year at the Sydney Opera House, and is described as bringing contentious ideas to the fore while challenging mainstream thought and opinion. The lineup of speakers this year includes the likes of Salman Rushdie, punk rock protest group Pussy Riot, and up until Tuesday, the controversial Islamist writer and activist Badar.

So what was the basis of the moral hysteria?

It wasn't a fear that one relatively obscure writer would somehow stand before a crowd and craft an argument so compelling it would succeed in shattering the moral scaffolding of each person sitting in the room. A few media outlets seemed to understand it this way, with one describing the talk as having been "slammed as a cheap stunt that could have put women's lives at risk". If so, how little faith in human reasoning, as well as our own moral convictions, do we have?