What if the Government had not lost two votes on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill last week? Such counterfactuals are often of passing amusement at best, but not at this pivotal moment in the history of Europe’s relationship with Islam.

If those votes had gone the other way, evidence of simple “recklessness” in actions likely to incite religious hatred would have obliged police who were monitoring demonstrations by militant Muslims in recent days to make arrests. The placards paraded through London calling for the massacre, annihilation and beheading of anyone perceived to have insulted Islam were, if anything, more unambiguously reckless than the second-rate Danish cartoons that served as their pretext. The men who carried them would now be awaiting trial. Senior BBC news executives and the acting editor of The Spectator might also be helping police with their inquiries for daring to show glimpses of the offending cartoons. A country, and a jurisdiction, that have done more than most over the centuries to defend the freedom of speech in all its complexity would have been launched on a corrosive downward spiral of censorship, self-censorship and mutual incomprehension.

Instead, demonstrations have passed off that, undoubtedly, caused acute dismay to many members of this generally tolerant society. To some degree these protests will have stirred up precisely the hatreds that the Government was seeking to quell. And they again highlight the volatility of mixing testosterone and theology; an even more toxic mixture of the same has been seen on the streets of Beirut and Damascus.

In Britain, the standard of proof required by police for incitement is high — and there is no doubt that some of the protesters’ poisonous banners were full of hatred — but the clumsy prosecution of the leader of the British National Party showed how difficult it is for the authorities to secure a conviction.

The restraint by the police has, therefore, been realistic. It has also been wise. Behind the masks and hateful slogans of the demonstrators there was dangerous fanaticism; but also the recklessness of young men in search of an adrenalin rush. To overreact would be to risk granting them undeserved stature. But the most compelling argument for restraint is moral as well as practical.

The histrionics of Britain’s radical Muslim minority deserve no more and no less protection than do those of the BNP, and only through being thoroughly aired will be they thoroughly ridiculed. The process is already under way, at least in this country. It is not only moderates such as Asghar Bukhari, chairman of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, who have denounced militant reaction to publication of the cartoons as “disgraceful and disgusting”. Even ideologically hardline and eccentric organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir have condemned it. There is an element of tactical self-interest here, but also an important awareness of lines that cannot be crossed if civil society is to remain civil.