I’M A GOOD HATER; up there with the best of ’em, I like to think. Off the top of my head, I hate the Fimbles, the British National Party, “rugger”, the Edinburgh Festival fringe, Swindon Town FC, Liberal Democrats twittering on about the Iraq dossier, large numbers of journalists, especially those with media columns, and — oh yeah — Lord Owen. To name but a few.

Nor am I a big fan of religion. So it should be a safe bet that I would be part of the prevailing orthodoxy — on these pages as much as anywhere else — against the Government’s Bill for outlawing incitement to religious hatred. But I’m not.

Opponents believe the Government is wrong to claim this Bill is merely an extension of existing laws against inciting racial hatred. They say that religion, like politics, is a matter of rational choice — but race is not. Where, they ask, does all this end? Perhaps there will be a law against inciting political hatred, leaving us all facing seven years in jail if we so much as denounce the BNP. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?

This is nonsense and they should know it. Faith is not like politics because, for a start, there is no real equivalent to the democratic process for determining winners and losers in religion. While most Tories will reluctantly pay higher taxes under a Labour government, the idea of a majority Christian population forcing Sikhs, Muslims and Jews to abandon their deepest beliefs is abhorrent.

There have, of course, been many attempts to impose the ascendancy of one religion on another. These include the Crusades, the burning of heretics and this month’s bombing of London. The extremist young British Muslims who killed themselves and scores of innocents did so apparently in the belief of creating a worldwide Islamic theocracy. And that is why we should all hate — and fear — religious hatred.

Religion has more in common with race than it has with politics. Most people born into one faith or another never really make a choice. The numbers of those who convert to a different religion cannot be very different from those who choose their race — or least that of their children — through marrying someone of a different skin colour.

Far from being an illiberal measure, the Bill currently being attacked from every side in Parliament should help cement Britain’s fragile — but wonderful — liberal multifaith, multi-ethnic society. It will not stop Rowan Atkinson making jokes about stammering vicars. Nor would it outlaw Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. There is an obvious difference between, on the one hand, inciting “hatred” with, on the other, legitimately criticising, ridiculing or causing offence. Sikhs are already protected by laws against inciting racial hatred and yet, for all their outrage about the play Behzti being staged in Birmingham last year, there was no attempt to prosecute those responsible for the production.

Indeed, in the 20 or so years since the race hate legislation was passed, there have been just 44 successful convictions. Its success has been to change Britain’s culture, forcing people to think about the consequences of what they do and say. Political correctness? Nah, just correctness.

If the religious hatred law survives a predictable mauling in the Lords, the limited but vital protection afforded to Sikhs and Jews — who are races as well as faiths — will be extended to Muslims, Christians and atheists too.

Shalid Malik, the impressive young Labour MP, persuaded many of his parliamentary colleagues to back the Bill by recalling how he had once been beaten to a pulp by racist skinheads who called him “a Paki”. Now, when he is surrounded by a gang of thugs, they abuse him for being a Muslim. It appears racists have learnt how to use loopholes for purposes other than lynching.

Some of the Bill’s opponents have accused the Government of appeasing Muslims after the Iraq war by introducing a measure long since demanded by Britain’s Islamic population.

But surely one of the purposes of a democratic government is to respond to the needs of marginalised groups? Just because Muslims want the Bill does not necessarily make it wrong. There is more than a hint of prejudice in the language used by those who attack ministers for “pandering to the Muslim vote” — as if anything to do with ethnic minorities reeks of the corruption associated with politics on the Indian sub-continent.

Small wonder then that so many Muslims feel let down by our political process. Since the bombing of London, reported incidents of Islamophobia are said to have risen tenfold. The fear felt by commuters on the Tube when a young Asian man sits next to them is matched by the fear of many Muslims daring to venture out on to the street. Such circumstances must strengthen the case to give them at least the same rights as Sikhs and Jews.

And who is it that wants the right to incite hatred of people because of their religion? The BNP for sure. Who else? Well, how about those twisted extremists who sent some pathetic young men off to London with backpacks filled with explosive. It should also catch those radical Islamic clerics who have urged — with impunity — their followers to make jihad against Christian, Jewish and atheist infidels across the world.

The proposed law will not, as some Muslims hoped, give them the same protection from blasphemy that (ridiculously) still exists for Christians. Instead, it may help to protect all of us from the BNP, which seeks to pervert British politics, and those who pervert Islam.

This Bill is about protecting believers (and non-believers), not beliefs. It would acknowledge the State’s agnosticism. Fundamental questions about which god is right, if any of them, are not going to be settled by either bombs or bombast. Let them sort it all out in the afterlife. Not here and, especially, not now.

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