Sir – Contrary to Robin Gill’s arguments (Letters, February 19), the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him), depicting him in various pornographic poses, are patently not free speech but hate speech, which serves no purpose except to ridicule and alienate Muslims.

In UK and many other countries there are laws which criminalise incitement of violence or ridicule of a group on the basis of religion, and you don’t need to spend long listening to a Muslim to realise that the cartoons do just that.

Mr Gill speaks of ‘what it is to be British’, and gives a sense that Muslims are somehow foreign guests in our country. This is wrong. There are no shades of citizenship. A British Muslim is as British as a British Methodist, Jew or Christian, and Mohamed, therefore, an important part of British culture. The challenge of multiculturalism is to balance the demands of Britain’s various cultures with wisdom, empathy and respect. In this context banning cartoons of the Prophet are a no-brainer, just as banning cartoons mocking victims of the holocaust would be.

While no one would claim that the West are responsible for the rise of Islamic extremism, and the emergence of ISIS, one would be naïve indeed to imagine that the West has had no role in their genesis. The torture of Muslim prisoners at Abu Graib, atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the daily belittling of Muslims in society all have their roles to play in driving young British Muslims to extremism.

The solution is education, and the post-Enlightenment values Mr. Gill speaks of, but to have education there must be a relationship, and to have a relationship there must first be respect.

Daniel Emlyn-Jones, Oxford