DJ: This brings us back to where we started, with the issue that faces you now at Borders, Luke, and faces all the bookshops.

LJ: All the bookshop chains are being harassed.

DJ: We're talking here about a book - The Jewel of Medina - that hardly anybody has actually read.

LJ: It hasn't even got a publisher.

DJ: In America Random House dropped it as soon as some academic criticised it.

MB: Well, that was particularly disgraceful, the way in which the person concerned got in touch with her Muslim friends to alert them that this shocker was coming, and I just thought that was so cynical.

LJ: You wonder what the motivation was - publicity seeking? Hard to understand...

DJ: But that's one example where to some
extent the extremists have so far won,
because they have actually prevented the publication of this book.

MB: Except in Serbia, of all places, where it has been published. There's another difficulty which we haven't touched upon, which is where exactly do you draw the line between legitimate artistic expression and your freedom to do it, and then just wilful provocation. Writing a novel is not a risk-free activity. I'm not saying I take this view myself, but where would you draw the line between someone writing a novel in good faith, and then some rubbishy comedian who might just make some ridiculous statement or do something provocative about Islam or Muhammad or whatever? Given how we've all been pretty sickened by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, are we just going to back up everything on the grounds that it's edgy, provocative, that it's free speech?