In a blog post on Saturday I wrote about efforts by some of the Arab states to criminalise anyone – non-Muslims included – who is seen eating, drinking or smoking during the daylight hours of Ramadan.

Compulsory fasting, as I suggested on Saturday, mis-uses the power of the state in order to maintain a public facade of religiosity regardless of what happens behind closed doors. In that sense, it's opportunistic and hypocritical. It also overlooks the fact that fasting is supposed to be an exercise in self-discipline, not a test of people's obedience to authority.

But let's look in more detail at the official reasons for these laws. The Saudi interior ministry, for example, says a law is necessary because fast-breaking "could hurt the feelings of Muslims".

The point here is not that fast-breaking actually hurts anyone's feelings but that it might do so. This follows a long-established Saudi legal principle: that the law should protect people from the possibility of harm as well as harm itself. It's the same argument that was used when the authorities tried to ban camera phones (since they might be used for immoral purposes) and it's one of the arguments still used against allowing women to drive: the car might break down on a lonely road and the woman might then be raped.

A blanket ban on fast-breaking thus appeases religious conservatives while removing the need for evidence in any particular case that someone's feelings have in fact been hurt. But the level of hurt caused – if any – surely depends on the circumstances. 

It is easy to see how fasting Muslims could be offended if someone taunted them while provocatively eating a sandwich in front of them. (Feeling hurt is not the only possible response, of course. They might, for example, welcome it as a test of their faith, but that wouldn't serve the Saudis' predilection for banning things..)

On the other hand, is it really necessary for citizens in Dubai to keep a lookout for anyone sitting quietly in a parked car and sipping from a bottle of water? According to the authorities in Dubai, the answer is yes and they should be reported to the police.

Laws against public fast-breaking may not seem an especially important issue but they are one of the more visible symptoms of a fundamental problem: the way Arab governments approach the question of people's rights and the muddled thinking that surrounds it.

Take Sheikh Abdel Moati Bayoumi, an Egyptian scholar at al-Azhar, for example. According to Bayoumi, fast-breaking in public "reveals contempt for those who are fasting, for Ramadan and for the fasting as an obligatory religious duty".

If, as he claims, fast-breaking shows "contempt for those who are fasting", what are people in Europe, the US, or other places where Muslims form a minority supposed to do? Should everyone refrain from eating and drinking in public, should cafes and restaurants be closed, in case any Muslims see it and have their feelings hurt?

I don't think Bayoumi has directly answered that question, but he clearly believes the rule on fast-breaking should apply to Egypt's Christians – a large minority whose numbers run into the millions. I suspect he would justify this with some kind of majoritarian argument – that Islam is the dominant faith in Egypt and that Christians should accept the wishes of the majority. 

Applying that logic to the west, Muslims who are fasting would presumably have to put up with seeing people eating and drinking around them because they are a minority, regardless of whether their feelings are hurt or not.

A comment responding to my previous blog post also resorted to majoritarian argument, saying that crackdowns on fast-breaking are "at best condoned by 99% of Muslim clerics and at worst called for by almost everyone".

This reflects one of the major problems in Arab politics today: a simplistic view of democracy where the principle of "the will of the majority" is now widely accepted but the need to balance that with protection for minorities is still scarcely recognised, let alone addressed.

Laws against fast-breaking are also one example (among many) of the religious protectionism practised by most Arab states. To compensate for their lack of electoral legitimacy, governments and rulers set themselves up as guardians of the faith. 

While this serves a political purpose its effect on Islam is largely negative. It reinforces the linkage between Islam and repressive forms of government and casts doubt on the sincerity of believers – implying they would readily abandon their faith if the government did not continue to shield them from exposure to "un-Islamic" ideas and practices.

Internationally, there is some evidence that religions are more likely to flourish if they do not have government support and that in the long run government support may damage them. In their book, Acts of Faith, Rodney Stark and Roger Finke argue that religions which have state support do not need to try very hard to attract followers and thus become complacent. On the other hand, religions without state support – as in the US – are forced into self-reliance and become stronger as a result.