I will start piece with a confession about my stance on free and open inquiry. I do not wish to bore you with platitudes but every generation has to have its superstitions refuted, no matter how tedious it may be.

Therefore, deliberately expressing controversial and offensive opinions in the face of those who would seek to restrict open inquiry is what keeps society from falling into a dictatorship.

We do not have free speech to talk about the weather, we have it to speak our minds without the fear of violent reprisal. This is why I contend that we have every reason to be especially cynical of the motives of those who wish to dictate the limits of speech, very often under the guise of a seemingly virtuous endeavour.

This attitude consequently sets a fierce yet healthy scepticism against most ideologies and religions, as these entail a vision of the world antithetical to the pluralism of ideas which, by extension, includes free speech.

Such ideas make enormous claims for themselves in that they pretend to be divine, absolute, unchanging and everlasting or some combination of such assumptions. But outrageous claims require outrageous evidence, and while this piece will not be characterised by the repudiation of religious dogma as that conversation has long been reconciled, it should be said that believing in an omniscient deity is, by extension, self-exemption from the confines of logic, reason and evidence.

Perhaps one of the reasons for why religion has been exempt from criticism is because it managed to falsely secure a monopoly over morality

When it comes to criticising religion, there doesn’t seem to be any way to have a meaningful debate without being offensive because religions, to varying degrees, go out of their way to stop the conversation from even happening.

This seems unrivalled in its strangeness, as it gives the impression that being offended is a valid argument.

Well, if we hypothetically allow for this as a viable rebuttal, then anyone could make this claim, effectively stopping any inquiry indefinitely.

So I feel very much offended when people deny evolution through natural selection. In fact, one could say that my level of hurt feelings is akin to the feelings of the faithful when someone denies the divine nature of the Koran or of any other religious scripture.

As is hopefully patently obvious, this gets us nowhere and while the evidence for evolution equals the evidence about the spherical shape of the world, we have yet to find a single sentence in these sacred texts that could not have been uttered by a person for whom a wheelbarrow would have been emergent technology.

Given the polarised nature of evidence for each of these claims, it makes more sense to be offended when someone denies evolution than when someone doubts the divine nature of the Koran.

The point here is not only that being offended is invalid as an argument but also that you are wrong to be offended in the first place. If the goal is to get to the truth, there is no premise and, hence, no reason for a rational mind to be offended by healthy scepticism and questioning.

One would almost think that the silencing of such debates happened for ulterior motives, perhaps due to the irreconcilable nature of scepticism and religious dogma. But why think for yourself when you’ve been provided with a total solution to your existence.

The truth is that there is no polite way to tell someone that they’ve devoted all their efforts and endeavours to the glorification of myths. There is no inoffensive way of saying this but it must be said nonetheless. In fact, it must be said now more than ever before lest we are to blindly pay for the rope that will choke us.

Perhaps one of the reasons for why religion has been exempt from criticism is because it managed to falsely secure a monopoly over morality, making any criticism of its contents blasphemy and, until recently, subject to State-subsidised punishment. The irony here is if I expressed the same sentiments about Zeus, nobody would bat an eyelid.

What I am saying here is that we have to treat religion, specifically Islam as it is the greatest threat to western civilisation, the same way we treat any other idea.

Islam does not get a free pass.

What is curious about Islam is how it has managed to enlist legions of western liberals to take offence on its behalf. How is it that we are in a situation where giving legitimate criticism about this religion is now synonymous with hatred, bigotry and “islamophobia” – the latter of which is not even a word?

Well, this brings us back to the aforementioned irreconcilability of reason and evidence with religion, hence, the monopoly on morality, hence, the taboo on criticising it.

Saying that Islam, as it currently stands, is incompatible with Western values – a perfectly lucid statement to my mind – is seen as hateful, evil and worthy of the worst slander imaginable.

I find it this attitude overtly condescending because the premise for such outrage is that Muslims cannot speak for themselves and so the more articulate liberals must do this for them. Even more so is the belief that other Muslims need them, so we must keep these people safe inside their echo chamber of myths and groupthink.

The late Christopher Hitchens relentlessly alerted the West to creeping Sharia and his views are as true now as they were then. A society is killed by a thousand shallow cuts and it’s about time we started treating Islam with the same incredulity and scepticism as we do any other religion.

Christopher Attard is a psychology student.