The brief section dealing with Islam fleetingly mentions the death of Theo van Gogh - there is a glimpse of his film Submission - and Maher gets to interview the Dutch politician Geert Wilders briefly. The film sparks into life at this point, almost as though it had inadvertently stumbled on something of consequence. But this is put side by side with a sequence, played for laughs, of a Dutch pot-head who has set up a personal religion around his drug of choice. This is trivialisation to a dangerous degree.

If one wanted to give Maher the benefit of the doubt one could say that this is all the product of ignorance. Despite 9/11, the ongoing problems Europe faces with Islamism still do not loom large in the US. But I think it more likely that the filmmakers realised that Islamists are not known for laughing at themselves or to take perceived offence lying down, so decided to lay off. Now that, as Maher might say, is cowardly.