JUST over a year has passed since Copenhagen joined the list of European cities struck by terrorists claiming to be acting in the name of Islam: two people were killed and five police injured in attacks on a free-speech debate and then a synagogue. For Danish civil-liberties campaigners, free speech itself is being added to the list of casualties, just as it has in other countries that feel threatened by jihadism. On one hand, Danish legislation designed to stop the “glorification of terrorism” has been used in a draconian way which sometimes treats the public assertion of Islam’s truth as suspect. On the other, strongly attacking Islam with words or gestures can also incur prosecution.

How does this happen? Like many democracies, Denmark has inherited an ancient, almost obsolete ban on blasphemy, criminalising those who “ridicule or insult the dogmas or worship of a lawfully existing religion.” In much more active use, a section of the criminal code outlaws “hate speech”, or to be specific, public statements by which groups of people are “threatened, insulted or degraded” on account of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion.

Several Western countries (Britain in 2008, Norway last year) have formally rescinded their near-defunct blasphemy laws, in part as a kind of protest against the appalling way in which such laws are misused in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Denmark considered that move but decided against it, citing the need to prevent provocative acts like the burning of holy books. But when faced with “provocation”, the authorities prefer not to allege blasphemy but instead to stretch the meaning of hate speech.

This month, for example, a man who filmed himself burning the Koran and uploaded the clip on social media found himself facing preliminary charges under the “hate speech” ban. In another case, in the town of Elsinore, a man was fined for a Facebook post in which he compared “the ideology of Islam” to Nazism and deplored the “immigration of Islamists” as destructive for Danish society. He too was charged with hate-speech offences, on grounds that his words were “insulting and degrading” to Muslims.

In the view of Jacob Mchangama, director of the civil-liberties think-tank Justitia, the authorities’ approach is disturbingly inconsistent. If they were being true to their own lights, they would have charged both offenders with blasphemy, and hence acknowledged that they were taking the controversial step of reviving that ancient offence. Instead, they were expanding the boundaries of hate speech in an unhealthy way. As the Danish lawyer added: “In a free society it is essential that all ideas and dogmas are open to unlimited criticism, satire and scrutiny. There is an essential difference between criticising a religion and subjecting its adherents to hatred, but Danish police and courts are blurring those lines.”

The fact is that in most countries, police and prosecutors want to have the widest possible range of legal tools at their disposal to stop statements and gestures which are likely to cause them headaches. In the northern English town of Gateshead, in 2011, six men were arrested over the burning of a copy of the Koran in the yard of a pub; but to the intense and openly expressed frustration of the police, prosecutors could find no grounds to lay charges, either under religious-hatred or public-order legislation. For one thing, it could not be proved that the action was “threatening”, even though common sense would suggest that in some other contexts, burning a holy book might indeed be a menacing gesture.

One of the reasons why prosecution was so difficult in that case is that civil-liberties campaigners in Britain have waged a hard and partially successful struggle to limit the scope of religious-hatred laws. That leaves Britain in a state half-way between that of the America, where there is a huge constitutional presumption in favour of free speech, and that of some continental European countries with a more dirigiste tradition. More about that in a forthcoming Erasmus.