Religious belief and religious identity

Four writers defend freedom of expression against the proposed government legislation to restrict it. Philip Pullman situates the issue within an interesting discussion of 'identity'. He is concerned about a too close fusion between identity and belief:

[T]o criticise the religion of someone who makes that religion the primary marker of their identity will be, specifically, to criticise them. It will be criticising what they are, not what they do. And if it comes to the courts, will the law be capable of distinguishing between a rational analysis of theology and an incitement to brutal violence? Home Office Minister Hazel Blears doesn't think it will: she has said that she can't predict how the courts will act. Better safe than sorry, is the implication.

The inevitable consequence for literature - as many others have pointed out - will be that publishing decisions will increasingly be made not by editors, as they used to be; nor by accountants, as they now are; but by lawyers. And my learned friends will be throwing the pall of their caution over the theatre as well, to the impoverishment of all of us.

Pullman goes on to say that religious conviction can drive people to a taste for the absolute, righteousness and intolerance. It certainly can. But, as I've said here before, I don't think this is the most powerful of arguments since it is not only religious conviction that can have that effect but dogmatic, 'fundamentalist' conviction of every kind. It invites the obvious retort that millions perished in the last century in the name of doctrines which were not, strictly-speaking, religions - even if they were followed by many as if they were. Pullman's concerns in the general drift of the piece are very much to the point, nonetheless - with 'the tide of religion... coming in again', as he puts it. Monica Ali writes in like vein:

Religions... are sets of ideas and beliefs. They should not be privileged over any other set of notions. I am not bound to respect the idea that I may be reincarnated as an insect or a donkey or that Jesus is the son of God or anything else that I regard as mumbo-jumbo. Indeed, if there are aspects and practices of a religion that conflict with my own notions and beliefs (of fairness and justice and so on) then the moral onus is on me to speak up against them. If I loathe the fact that Islam has been used to deny the right of women in Saudi Arabia to vote then I ought to say so.

And Philip Hensher and Salman Rushdie have pertinent things to say in the same place.

Those who defend the proposed legislation have offered reassurance to the effect that it will not restrict or penalize any speech, writing etc., that is genuinely directed towards criticizing belief, as opposed to stirring up hatred against people for their religious identity - a view that seems to be shared by David Aaronovitch (listen to the interview with him here). But I don't know how reassuring that really is, when it relies on having confidence in intentions and legal interpretation that belong to the future.