The law is an ass? No. Today it's a helpless and headless chicken, frightened of its own shadow.

Witness the case of Samina Malik, the WH Smith clerk and erstwhile “lyrical terrorist”, convicted on November 8 and due to be sentenced today, under Section 57 of the Terrorism Act, for possessing material “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. The evidence against Malik boiled down to various documents harvested from websites, including weapons manuals and The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook.

Documents downloaded were compounded by documents uploaded - namely the jaw-droppingly dreadful poetry that Malik posted on various websites under the moniker “Lyrical Terrorist”. And that's it. No plot revealed. No terrorist network uncovered. Just some embarrassing and juvenile fantasies about jihad and beheadings, laid bare to the world.

Yet bewilderingly, every legal representative involved in the case - judge, prosecutor, defence - joined in the wide-eyed credence given to this idiotic young woman. They should have known better.

The prosecutor Jonathan Sharp said of her poetry: “These communications strongly indicate Samina Malik was deeply involved with terrorist related groups.” How, exactly? Is al-Qaeda out to poison the poetic bedrock of Western civilisation with crass imagery and poor scansion? No better sense from the defence counsel, John Burton, who compared Malik's poetry to Wilfred Owen's, telling Old Bailey jurors that, like Owen, Malik's poetry was “stark and deliberately shocking”. Malik's “Chop chop head of kuffar swine” an equal of Dulce Et Decorum Est? Get a grip.

And then we come to the judge, Peter Beaumont, QC. He told Malik: “You have been in many respects a complete enigma to me.” Your Honour should relax. She typifies no one but herself. You may, like me, find it hard to understand the nihilism that drives a 23-year-old to pen such verse, but nihilism isn't a crime and there's a lot of it about nowadays - not just among wannabe jihadists. What you cannot do is convict someone because of their nihilistic fantasies.

And this is why what happens to Samina Malik today really matters. This Government wants to climb inside your head, see what's going on and tell you what's right. In all of this we are being sold the lie that there's a thin line between thought and action. Wrong. It's a thick line. Our reason - as individuals and as society - can confront and judge all sorts of crazy ideas. We have got to allow people to think and say the unthinkable, because sometimes the unthinkable turns out to be true.

To lock her up because you don't like what she thinks and says is not only cowardly. It is an affront to society.

Times Recommends

• A dose of defeat is just the medicine
• Protecting ourselves from Eurocreep
• After the summer of LUV, it'll still hurt