The BBC's decision to cancel the broadcast of Hanif Kureishi's Weddings and Beheadings is another instance of what seems to be a creeping inclination on the part of our broadcasting institutions to censor imaginative writings using the excuse of political or religious sensitivity. This is a dangerous phenomenon. It bodes ill for our culture as a whole and the free imaginative expression which underpins it. We are prone to take this too much for granted.

Recorded as one of the shortlist for the National Short Story prize, Kureishi's story was pulled, purportedly on the grounds that the timing "would not be right" amid unconfirmed reports that kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston had been killed by a jihadist group.

But as Mark Lawson, chair of the National Short Story prize judges has pointed out, there are no grounds for thinking that "Kureishi intended any recognisable reference to any single actual incident in the Middle East, or that one can be read into the story. It's perhaps also important to say that the story was written, first published and initially judged before the disappearance of Alan Johnston."

Kureishi has long been a prescient writer, his imagination attune to the ins and outs of life in a multicultural society. His My Son, The Fanatic alerted many of us to the growing radicalisation of second generation Muslim youth, well before politicians woke to the fact; more importantly, it also gave readers an insight into the process by which radicalisation occurs.

In Weddings and Beheadings Kureishi taps into the way horror takes on an added dimension by being performed for the camera and then circulates the globe as an inflamatory pornography of violence. This is a pressing subject and Kureishi's authorial stance is deeply critical, while simultaneously alerting us to what has become a fact in our world of rapidly circulating images. To shrug our shoulders and pretend it won't happen if the BBC or any other institution, political or religious body, decide discussion or depiction of such phenomena is too sensitive for circulation is patently nonsense. More importantly, to censor such imaginative depiction or discussion is to become complicit to a world view which would pull a veil of silence over the most pressing problems of our time.

English PEN which fought a long campaign - in which the BBC during the Jerry Springer matter found itself on the other side of the 'sensitivity' divide - against the government's bill to criminalise religious hatred, is deeply concerned about the BBC's present decision to cancel the broadcast of Kureishi's story.

It comes at a time when various forces are ranked to clamp down on that freedom which underpins so many of our others - free expression.

Recently the United Nations human rights council adopted a resolution on combating defamation of religions by a vote of 24 in favour, 14 against, and nine abstentions, in which the council expresses deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations. The resolution noted "with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions, and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities, in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001. It urged states "to take resolute action to prohibit the dissemination including through political institutions and organisations of racist and xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers that constitute incitement to racial and religious hatred, hostility or violence ... "

Though the European states voted against the resolution, we all need to take great care that the kind of sensitivity here expressed doesn't creep into our public life and chill imaginative expression of all kinds. All around the world, writers and journalists languish in prison because of the "sensitivity" to defamation of their states.

The BBC's current stance on Kureishi's Weddings and Beheadings also gives hostages to fortune. It would do far better to broadcast Kureishi's story or give us an immediate date of broadcast, and follow this up with a discussion of the pornography of violence from Abu Ghraib to beheadings, rather than to pull the blinkers down over our world and make us feel that discussion or imaginative writing is at fault, when it is the real world that needs changing.