Who stands up for Robert Redeker today? Intellectuals such as Roger-Pol Droit, Claude Lanzmann and Pierre-André Taguieff. Certainly not his former colleagues. "Leftists and teachers' unions would rather defend a terrorist convicted of murder like Cesare Battisti than defend me, a man in danger of being murdered by terrorists," he says. (France agreed to extradite Battisti to Italy. He had lived in France for 20 years under the protection of a refuge policy established by President François Mitterrand and repealed by the Sarkozy government. But after a campaign led by Carla Bruni, he has since been granted asylum in Brazil.

Is it possible to speak freely about Islam today in France? No, replies Redeker, freedom of expression is under constant pressure from the fallacious notion of "Islamophobia". The term, invented by Ayatollah Khomeini to stifle critics, equates the legitimate criticism of a religion and its ideology with racism. Reasonable people are frightened, he says, by Islamist ideology and barbaric practices. "It's not a question of Islam as religious belief but as a coercive ideology that crushes millions of human beings under its implacable yoke." Europeans justifiably fear the loss of freedoms won in bitter struggles over centuries; they fear the intrusion of religion in politics, jeopardising the separation of church and state.

"Islam is the only religion that frightens people," says Redeker. "All over the world, Islam shows a face of hatred, intolerance, injustice, and archaism." The term "Islamophobia," he explains, was invented to make opposition to Islam a criminal offence, a typical totalitarian ploy. (Indeed, the parallel between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is systematically established in FRA documents and echoed in tracts published by associations for Jewish-Muslim entente. Islamophobia is invoked whenever a mosque is vandalised, Muslim tombs are desecrated or an act of jihad mass murder is denounced.)

How does Robert Redeker reply to detractors who ask why anti-Semitism is punished while defamation of Islam is defended? He argues that criticism or fear of Islam - a religion, a system of thought, a world view, an ideology - is acceptable in a liberal society. Hatred of Jews as a people is not.