Asked to comment on the FRA's preoccupation with discrimination against "visible minorities", coupled with its indifference to pressure for anti-blasphemy legislation, Redeker observes tersely that Muslim nations, world champions in discrimination - eg, the statute of dhimmi - are pushing to make blasphemy a crime. "That would be discrimination against freedom and intelligence. Durban I was a festival of anti-Semitism; Durban II is heading the same way."

Does Islam ultimately endanger rational thinking? Is the French educational system resisting this pressure or gradually abandoning intellectual discipline?

"Freedom of expression is the most precious invention of Europe, a treasure that no other civilisation was able to construct," Redeker replies. "This freedom is the heart and soul of Europe's spiritual existence. Those who try to destroy Europe or force it to submit to a totalitarian ideology aim first at this freedom of expression. This happened with the major totalitarian movements of the 20th century. Many recent affairs - the scandal over the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark and in France is a perfect example - show that for the enemies of European civilisation, freedom of expression is the first obstacle that must be eliminated. Pressure against this freedom is constant. Many history teachers in French lycées censor their courses when there are Muslim students in the class. Often, they cannot teach the history of the Shoah, though it is on the programme. The great historian Olivier Pètré Grenouilleau was taken to court because he explained, in his masterpiece Les Traites Négrières [The Slave Trades], that the slave trade was an invention of Islam, conducted with the active participation of African kingdoms and it caused more fatalities than the Western trade. This example shows that attacks against freedom of expression are also attacks against the truth. Negationism, the falsification of historical truth, is energetically peddled by Islamists and finds eager consumers in the banlieues [suburban housing estates]."

Though Robert Redeker's case is the most dramatic, other intellectuals are subject to cruel and unusual punishment. Careers have been destroyed, damaged or interrupted. The expression of ideas that might arouse the ire of Muslims is suppressed. Reprimanded in 2004 for his classes on Muhammad, Louis Chagnon, a history teacher in a Parisian banlieue, was only recently rehabilitated. The philosopher Alain Finkielkraut - promoted last month from chevalier to officier de la Légion d'honneur - was intellectually lynched in 2005 for highlighting the ethnic and religious aspects of the banlieue uprising.