"Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression," according to an article on the USA Today website. 

This is the kind of sweeping generalisation that would normally give rise to complaints of Islamophobia, and countless Muslims who have been imprisoned or otherwise punished in Muslim countries for saying things that annoyed other Muslims would no doubt disagree with its sentiment.

However, the author of this article is not some bigot from the American far right but Anjem Choudary, described by USA Today in surprisingly mild terms as "a radical Muslim cleric in London and a lecturer in sharia". Readers who are unfamiliar with the name should look him up.

Islam, Choudary writes, means "submission to the commands of Allah alone". Consequently, there can be no freedom of expression because the speech and actions of Muslims "are determined by divine revelation and not based on people's desires".

Choudary goes on to blame the French government for yesterday's carnage in Paris – by allowing Charlie Hebdo magazine "to provoke Muslims", thereby "placing the sanctity of its citizens at risk". (In 2005, he made a similar argument about the British government and the London bombings which left 56 people dead and 700 injured.)

Basically, Choudary is advocating a religious dictatorship where Muslims are not allowed to think for themselves in case they transgress against the Divine Will and non-Muslims are not allowed to criticise in case they besmirch the "honour" of the Prophet. In the latter case, Choudary notes, the punishment – "implementable by an Islamic State" – is death.

But there is nothing particularly holy in this: it's about humans exercising power over other humans and using God as their excuse for doing so. Conveniently, the God connection and sensitivities surrounding it can also be used to de-legitimise the sort of critical scrutiny that other types of ideology face.

"Muslims," Choudary writes, "consider the honour of the Prophet Muhammad to be dearer to them than that of their parents or even themselves. To defend it is considered to be an obligation upon them."

Obviously, Muslims can revere him as much as the wish, but is it reasonable to expect everyone else to do likewise – especially when we consider the enormity of Muhammad's claim? Anyone who claims to have received messages from God is liable to be greeted with scepticism by at least some of the population and can scarcely expect it to be otherwise. Muhammad was often ridiculed in his own lifetime, and in the monotheistic tradition rejection and mockery is almost the sine qua non of being a prophet.

But even if we assume Muhammad did receive messages from God, there's still the problem of interpreting these messages. "Submission to the commands of Allah", as Choudary puts it, is no simple matter because the language of the Qur'an is often obscure or ambiguous, and on some questions it is totally silent.

Islamic scholars often explain this lack of clarity as a sort of test where God wants humans to use their intelligence and powers of reasoning to work out what is required. Inevitably, that gives rise to differences of opinion and arguments about what the scripture means. That, in turn, requires freedom of expression – without which there would be no Islamic scholarship worthy of the name.