London, England - A coalition of some of Britain's most prominent actors, artists and writers will today make a last-minute attempt to persuade the government to amend its plans for a new law banning "incitement to religious hatred".
MPs are due to debate the bill tomorrow, but campaigners fear the legislation will gag free speech while failing to help community relations, or even hindering them.
Currently Jews and Sikhs are protected by existing legislation making incitement to racial hatred a crime, but the law does not cover other, non-racial, faith groups, such as Muslims.
The government failed to get a bill through parliament before the election which included a clause outlawing incitement to religious hatred. Instead, the Labour manifesto and the Queen's speech promised a new bill specifically on the matter. MPs get their first chance to vote on that bill tomorrow.
Today a delegation led by the actor Rowan Atkinson, the director of the National Theatre, Nick Hytner, and the novelist Ian McEwan, will urge MPs to back a compromise clause to the bill, which would outlaw attacking people's faith "as a proxy" to attacking their race.
Shami Chakrabati, the director of civil liberties group Liberty, said: "There may be good intentions behind this bill but the road to censorship is paved that way.
"Most anti-Muslim hatred is thinly veiled race hatred, capable of being caught by a more narrow amendment to the present law. This offence is capable of catching attacks on ideas as well as people.
"At best this is an empty sop to a community sorely let down by government. At worst it is a dangerous new blasphemy law out of step with our best traditions."
McEwan wrote in a letter to the prime minister last week: "I believe this legislation is vaguely drafted, fundamentally illiberal, and likely to promote, rather than diminish, tensions between religious groups, and to exacerbate racial hatred."
He backed the amendment now being proposed by Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris. The novelist said the amendment "would adequately prevent, for example, the BNP using 'Muslim' as substitute for race, without compromising freedom of expression."
The amendment, first drafted by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Lester, received the support of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties and 25 Labour MPs when the measure was last debated as part of the serious organised crime and police bill in the Commons. The clause on incitement to religious hatred was subsequently dropped from that bill when it met widespread opposition in the Lords as the election date approached.
Both the Lib Dems and the Tories oppose the new racial and religious hatred bill. The government says the measure is an attempt to give the same rights to the Muslim community - under fierce attack from the British National party among others - as to other faith groups. But some in the opposition parties have seen the measure as a Labour sop to the Muslim community in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
Today's delegation includes Ms Chakrabati, Mr Harris, the Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee, the Tory shadow attorney general, Dominic Grieve, and the Labour backbencher Bob Marshall-Andrews.