This isn’t only being exploited in the context of Islam. After the Russian KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in Britain, a woman named Julia Svetlichnaya came forward to smear Litvinenko and thereby undermine Britain’s case against the Kremlin (it would later indict Russia named Andrei Lugovoi, who the Kremlin has refused to extradite for trial).

When a European newspaper published an account indicating Svetlichnaya might be a Kremlin agent, she waited until a British newspaper picked up the story and then filed suit. The paper instantly capitulated, seeming to give credence to Svetlichnaya’s claim that the story had been trumped up by dissident oligarch Boris Berezovsky, when in fact it could well be that the paper was simply afraid of the draconian British libel provisions.

In this way Britain’s law is actually undermining the nation’s security.