If Voltaire were alive today he’d be horrified to see how his name has been taken in vain by extremist propagandists. “On Islam, Voltaire was three centuries ahead of us,” runs a typical headline on the anti-Islam website Riposte Laïque (Secular Response) – over a column by the Front National supporter Maurice Vidal, who argues that Islamophobia is “not a crime but an act of self-defence”. Another FN supporter, Robert Ménard, runs a website called Boulevard Voltaire, that claims to be guided by Enlightenment values but in reality sides with right-wing Catholics against minority rights and hurls abuse at moderate politicians. Then there’s the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network), a website founded by the conspiracy theorist Thierry Meyssan, that invokes Voltaire’s name for virulent secularist attacks on religion. Voltaire was, of course, the scourge of the Catholic Church; but he was also a staunch defender of religious freedoms. He would certainly have directed his “sarcasm” at Islamist folly, but he would never have joined in the raucous “pork-and-wine parties” held by the Islam-baiters. Voltaire’s name stands for tolerance, reason and defending the oppressed; it should never be used as a code word for bully-boy extremism. (Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris 24 Aug 2013

Epicurus also, in his day, stood for tolerance, reason, and defending the oppressed. He might well have said, “I do not believe in your God or in your religion, but I defend to the death your right to your beliefs, and in your right to state them, unimpeded by bullies”.