According to its website, Index on Censorship was founded “to protect the basic human right of free expression”. You and I might interpret that to mean that Index champions the rights of authors, artists and intellectuals to express their views. You and I would be wrong. Free expression does not apply, it seems, to those who criticise Islam.

A fortnight ago Theo van Gogh was stabbed and shot in Amsterdam by an extremist Muslim who objected to the Dutch film-maker’s latest work, which lambasted the treatment of women under Islam. To most people, this was a deplorable crime and precisely the sort of outrage that Index would be expected to condemn.

Index certainly published a condemnation. But its hostility was directed not at the murderer but at his victim. In an article by Rohan Jayasekera, the associate editor of Index on Censorship, we are informed that van Gogh’s death was “his very own martyrdom operation”. He was responsible for his own death, implies Jayasekera, because he criticised extremist Muslims. Indeed, he sought his own death: “The inevitable violence of their response was grist to his mill.”

Not that anyone should be surprised. After all, he had made a “furiously provocative” film with the Somalia-born Dutch MP Ayann Hirsi Ali who has campaigned against the abuse of women under Islam. The film was “an abuse of his right to free speech”.

Yes, you read that right. A film that criticises the abuse of women is an “abuse” of free speech. Indeed, van Gogh is the guilty party because, in highlighting the behaviour of extremists, he “roared his Muslim critics into silence” by “effectively censoring their moderate views as well”.

Leave aside Jayasekera’s lesser stupidities, such as the assertion that making a film that expresses one view amounts to censoring opposing views. Concentrate instead on the grotesque warping of morality that condemns the author rather than the book burner and murderer.

Van Gogh may not have been a pleasant man, and he had views with which Jayasekera disagreed. So what? I have a special loathing of Michael Moore, who I believe makes films which distort the facts for pecuniary gain. Does that mean I am entitled to kill him?