A recent development in Italy has sent the world a chilling message: Be nice to Islam, or you could find yourself in court.

Last week, an Italian judge ordered best-selling author, Oriana Fallaci, to stand trial. Fallaci, a native Italian now living in New York, is accused of “defaming” Islam through her popular books that sharply criticize the religion. The ruling is the result of a lawsuit brought by Muslim activists who, citing Italy’s hate crime laws, have accused Fallaci of defamation of Islam and incitement of religious hatred.

This case is yet another episode in the European trend toward extreme political correctness. The main legal causes of this trend are hate-crime laws, which create stiffer penalties for crimes motivated by racial, religious, or other prejudices. And while the advocates of such laws insist they do not wish to criminalise free speech or ideas, hate crime laws do just that. This has led to a courtroom in northern Italy, where an author’s right to criticize religion is on trial.

The link between hate crime laws and infringement of free speech is not immediately obvious. After all, a man committing a racially motivated murder, for example, is not exercising his right to free speech; he is committing a heinous crime. But before a racial murder was a “hate crime” it was simply a crime punishable by law. The only change made to the law by the addition of hate crimes has not been to criminalise racial murders — those were already illegal — but to criminalise racism itself.

Racism, of course, is neither rational nor defensible, but it is a form of opinion. Outlawing one opinion opens the door for the targeting of others. If prejudiced motives make a crime fundamentally different from other crimes, it’s not a large logical leap to declare that speech motivated by prejudice is also different from other speech — and therefore not protected. The end result is to make offensive speech and thoughts punishable by law.

Hence, hate crime laws have acted as a foot in the door for the legal precedent and cultural premise that some opinions can be penalized so long as it can be demonstrated that they have “harmed” somebody. The case of Oriana Fallaci versus Islam is the latest twist or tweak of a legal framework that is being shaped by subtle degrees into a tool for intellectual oppression.

Prohibiting the expression of ideas that are viewed as offensive is a clear violation of the principle of free speech. It should be obvious to anyone who values open debate and the free exchange of ideas that this process represents a major threat.

After all, every new idea that challenges and eventually displaces the established view necessarily “offends” someone.

The reason hate crime laws are dangerous is because they are non-objective. A non-objective law is one that is inherently vague and undefined, as opposed to objective law, which is strictly defined.

We know what murder and assault are, for example, but what do “discrimination” and “hate” refer to, exactly? One can point to the current definitions on the books, but that would ignore the ever-changing nature of these laws.

We can witness this process right before our eyes. Weekly or monthly, lawmakers have changed the definition of these laws to cover more and more groups and widen the scope of punishable offenses. Since the definitions are open-ended, there is no stopping a political opportunist from tweaking the meaning of the laws to his favor. As a result, laws that initially targeted racially or religiously motivated crimes are now being used to attack racially or religiously motivated speech.

Even if a jury dismisses the ridiculous charges against Oriana Fallaci as a clear violation of free speech, it will be only a minor setback for the Muslim activists, who will take the very trial itself as a substantial victory. Without a vocal opposition to these laws and the dangers they bring, the trend will continue.