More on the legal subtleties of the Pace case from Christopher Orlet:

…it is not hate crime statutes that prevent many Westerners from criticizing Islam, rather it is intimidation. As Christopher Hitchens has said, dumping the Koran in the toilet is not intimidation. Supporting the assassination of Salman Rushdie is. The former offends Muslim lobbying groups like the Council of Islamic-American Relations. The latter does not… The immediate difficulty with New York’s case is that Shmulevich did not commit his act against “a person” but “an ideology.” There were no witnesses to his “illegal” actions. He was apprehended only after he was observed pilfering the holy books by the university’s ubiquitous security cameras. Besides, if Shmulevich had really insulted Muslims he would have been prosecuted under the Fighting Words Doctrine, which criminalizes “insulting or ‘fighting words,’ those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” But Shmulevich was not accused of violating the doctrine, doubtless because the U.S. Supreme Court has held that mere offensiveness does not qualify as “fighting words”…

Orlet concludes, importantly:

Hate crimes legislation, created by timid, cowardly, and pressure-group-influenced legislators, therefore coopts and renders null and void the freedom of expression clause of the First Amendment, which was designed by courageous legislators, true revolutionaries who had put their necks on the line to protect the criticism of religion.