A militant atheist who left obscene leaflets mocking Jesus Christ, the Pope and the Koran in the prayer room of an international airport has gone on trial charged with religious harassment.

Harry Taylor, a 59-year-old self-styled philosophy tutor left leaflets with “sexually abusive and sexually unpleasant cartoons”, in the prayer room at Liverpool’s John Lennon airport, a jury heard yesterday.

One image showed a smiling Christ on the cross next to an advert for a brand of “no nails” glue. In another, Islamic suicide bombers at the gates of paradise are told: ” Stop, stop, we’ve run out of virgins.”

A further cartoon showed two Muslims holding a placard demanding equality with the caption: “Not for women or gays, obviously.”

Mr Taylor said that he held no grudge against people of faith and said he was only trying to “convert” believers to atheism.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that he left the materials in John Lennon airport as a tribute to the former Beatle, whose song Imagine referenced “a world with no religion”.

He said: “The airport is named after John Lennon and his views on religion were pretty much the same as mine. I thought that it was an insult to his memory to have a prayer room in the airport.”

The airport chaplain, Nicky Lees, discovered the leaflets and told the court she felt “deeply offended and insulted” by their contents.

Prosecutor Neville Biddle said that Mr Taylor had gone beyond freedom of expression by leaving the “insulting, threatening and abusive” images in a room used for worship.

He said: “Of course people have a right to speak freely and have a right to insult people. It is one of the most important rights we have and it must be jealously guarded.

“But it is a right not without some prescription. Mr Taylor exceeded that right.”

Addressing the jury he continued: “Your decision will not be easy. You are the conscience of society and you must decide what you are prepared to put up with and what goes beyond reasonable bounds. You are twelve tolerant reasonable British people who know what freedom of speech is all about.”

The defendant from Salford, Greater Manchester is charged with three counts of religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress under the Crime and Disorder Act. The alleged offences took place on separate dates in November and December 2008.

Mr Taylor denied the charges and said it was “preposterous” to suggest that people could be incited to violence by the cartoons. He said: “I am not hostile to religious people but I am hostile to religion.”

He told the court that he adapted cartoons cut out of newspaper and magazines like Private Eye and added captions of his own.

The images shown to the jury included a drawing of the Pope with a condom on his finger, and a picture of a woman kneeling in front of a Catholic priest captioned with a crude pun. In another image sausages were labelled as “The Koran”.