I refer to the article by Jason Azzopardi, shadow minister for home affairs, ‘To vilify, or not to vilify’ (April 1). He takes me to task for something I wrote on March 23 when I said: “Freedom of speech does not mean a thing if we don’t also defend it for those who offend, rile and outrage.

“Everyone must have free speech, otherwise it’s not free speech at all. It is privileged speech. We need more provocation, not less. To draw the line at preventing vilification of religion… would make those who are so incensed by a person’s opinion that they resort to such a law the final arbiters on free speech.”

Azzopardi chose to draw a tendentious and quite unjustified connection between my plea for “more provocation, not less” in the context of freedom of speech, and the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels.

It takes a very fevered imagination to see any connection between the two. Clearly not understanding what I had written, he called these words irresponsible. Given that he and his party are highly incensed because he is being charged with defamation against a former Commissioner of Police, which they regard as a “threat to democracy” and a “means of muzzling” the shadow minister from exercising his right (presumably because he is a member of Parliament) to exercise his freedom of speech, there is a bitter-sweet irony to the contorted position he has now taken up.

Azzopardi can’t have it both ways: freedom for him to exercise the right to free speech even if it means defaming the former commissioner, but no freedom for others to exercise free speech if it means insulting the Church. You cannot have privileged speech. Freedom of speech should be paramount and indivisible.

Free speech means being prepared to have your beliefs ridiculed and your sensibilities offended. Liberty, as Azzopardi perhaps now recognises, is also the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.