I RECENTLY watched an impassioned 18-minute film on the subject of religion and freedom, made as a kind of personal statement by Jacob Mchangama, a Danish human-rights lawyer. Copies of the film were given out to all participants in last week's Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual human-rights festival, and it was also posted on the website of the "Free to Choose" network, a lobby group which advocates free markets and free speech. In part because of his unusual background, Mr Mchangama feels personally affected by some of the recent global furores over religion, blasphemy and free expression. He grew up in liberal Denmark but his forebears on one side came from the Comoros Islands; so he has close kin who practise Islam, albeit not of the harsh, intolerant variety which seems to be gaining ground in the Middle East. Mr Mchangama was shocked in particular by two of the recent global rows over perceived insults to Islam. One was over the Danish cartoons, irreverently depicting Islam's prophet, which triggered murderous protests, riots and boycotts across the Muslim world; the other was last year's controversy over a crudely made film, "The Innocence of Muslims", which provoked a similar reaction. What shocked him was not the perceived insult to Islam but the weak-minded response, as he saw it, of Western governments in the face of a threat to free speech; and the fact that senior figures in the Western world went out of their way to assuage Muslim anger.

In his film, entitled "Collision! Free Speech and Religion", Mr Mchangama juxtaposes images from the peacefully diverse American Middle West with shots from some of the hotspots of the Islamic world, including Iran and Pakistan. In America, he argues, a robustly enforced regime of freedom of speech provides a basis for people of many religions and none to live together. As a test case for free speech, he cites the extreme case of the Westboro Baptist Church; and he notes (as a recent Erasmus posting did) that purist libertarians are prepared to defend both the Westboro bigots and even the plan of a neo-Nazi group to stage an event in a town in Illinois where many holocaust survivors live. He contrasts the freedom which followers of the Bahai faith enjoy in Middle America with the appalling persecution they face in Iran.

The film shows Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist, describing the threat that he lives with; and Naser Khader, a liberal-minded Muslim from Denmark, making a (compelling) case that the reaction to the cartoons reflected power contests within Danish Islam, and the wider Muslim world, rather than a spontaneous burst of rage.

I agree with Mr Mchangama that blasphemy laws, implicitly threatening to use the state's coercive might to punish irreverent speech, are both undesirable in themselves, and an ineffective way to ensure social harmony. But I also think he weakens his own case by overstating it. It's true that punishing blasphemy won't secure social peace, but rescinding all blasphemy laws, and robustly defending everyone's right to insult, sneer and abuse, won't necessarily get you social peace either.

As a matter of sociological fact, rather than value-judgement, social peace depends on more than the presence or absence of laws. If passionate hatreds between classes or between racial, ethnic or religious groups fester in a society, then blasphemy laws won't keep the peace. But nor will the rescinding of all blasphemy laws. For social harmony to exist, other preconditions have to be in place. A minimum number of people have to subscribe to the principle that living together peacefully and constructively (in a household, a village, a clan or any other sort of group) is a desirable end; and that in pursuit of that end, it may sometimes be a good idea to show a minimum of good manners or self-restraint. If no trace of such feeling exists, then no legal regime or non-regime on earth can maintain harmony, in any micro-community or mega-community.

In a paradoxical way, Mr Mchangama and his bitterest opponents (the advocates of blasphemy laws) have something in common. Both think that legal systems are all-important in determining social outcomes. Yes, law is important, but so are culture, internalised moral values (whether individual or collective) and many other intangibles.