Here's one of my more cunning ideas from wayback (1989), written down for the first time.

A long while ago (1977), one of the more odious self-appointed guardians of public morality—Mary Whitehouse—decided to take advantage of the antiquated state of the British legal system, and successfully brought a private prosecution for blasphemy against Gay News magazine.

Now we wind forward by a few years, to the publication of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" in 1989. As we all know, this was immediately followed by a surge of outrage against its author from the Islamic world, including the declaration of a fatwa against him.

More locally, several prominent Muslims in the UK wanted to repeat Mary Whitehouse's approach to anything that she didn't want to hear—rather than just, say, not buying the book, they wanted to turn to the courts to ban it completely. However, they quickly discovered the fact that Britain still has a conflated Church and State; the law of blasphemy in the UK only applies to Christianity.

(We can pause here for a moment to appreciate the delicious irony that in the UK, where church-going is pretty much at an all-time low, the Church and State are thoroughly intertwined, whereas in the US, where church-going has the huge proportion of 44%, the State is absolutely required to be separate from religion)

Next, a piece of information: the Koran contains the assertion that Jesus Christ did not actually die on the cross— it was all an illusion (from chapter 4, "The Women", around line 157).

Now I'm not a Christian, but I find it hard to imagine any Christian who would not find that concept blasphemous. In particular, it's difficult to believe that Mary Whitehouse would have let the idea escape censure, given her previous record for vexatious litigation. So now we get to the cunning bit: to persuade Mary Whitehouse to bring a private prosecution for blasphemy against the publishers of the Koran.

Pause for a moment to appreciate the implications. It wouldn't have made her particularly popular with the Muslim community, now would it? And we all know how wonderfully, erm, tolerant a few of them are.