Excuse me for interrupting so late in this conversation (especially when I hardly ever sing folk songs), but I think you put your toe over the fence, Peter K., with this line: ". . . that the playwright was not in any sense setting out to cause offence." That point should be irrelevant to a freedom of speech analysis. (Artistic expression is the same thing.) I may deeply desire to offend the ones I love in order to rattle their cage and bring them around to seeing something I feel they need to see. The ones I love may be of my culture or another. So it is also irrelvant whether the playwright was a member of the offended culture.

If the offended culture is of an identifiably oppressed minority (a matter of degree, certainly), then in an inspection the judiciary should maintain a heightened awareness that what is presented as art or satire may be illegal and immoral hate speech. Hate speech has the potential to incite inappropriate discrimination and even violence (even if directed at a powerful majority cutlure), and should by properly banned by due legal process.

Rock throwers and intimidators (using implied or overt threats of violence), should be prosecuted, of course. We do not need to understand their religious or cultural sensitivities in this instance.