Albania – a little country in the south-east of Europe with a population of less than three million – has a big lesson for the West.

This month sees the chaos unfolding from Scotland's new Hate Crime and Public Order Act. The law, which came into force on April 1, makes statements deemed to 'stir up hatred” in relation to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation or gender a crime, and applies to things said even in the home. Incidents can be reported anonymously and Police Scotland, having promised to investigate every allegation, has already received far more complaints than it can handle.

Beyond the issues of overwhelming public services and wasting taxpayers' money, Scotland's new legislation raises concerns about the changing values of Western society. The law is part of a trend in which governments are increasingly policing “hate speech”. Lawmakers in Canada are proposing that even those suspected of contemplating a “hate crime” should be put under house arrest.

While on the face of it, such laws seek to enforce secular values of equality and protect groups historically suffering from discrimination, they inevitably affect people's ability to express themselves freely about core aspects of human life, especially those concerned with reproduction, relationships and sexual behaviour,

Five springs ago, I spent a month in Tirana, looking at the state of the country 30 years after the fall of the dictatorship that cut it off from the rest of the world for nearly half a century. Albania's isolationist form of Communism was like no other. Enver Hoxha pursued a nationalistic ideology based on scientific materialism and focused on his own godlike status. Religion, interposing a higher authority between the Albanian citizen and the leader who embodied the country's “true” values, posed a particular threat. “The only religion of Albania is Albanianism,” he wrote, citing the 19th century poet Pashko Vasa.

Hoxha knew the task of destroying religion would be a difficult one. When he came to power in the 1940s, Albania was home to Muslims and Christians of both Orthodox and Catholic denominations, as well as the site of the world headquarters of the Bektashi, a mystical sect of Islam. In a letter of 1967 he instructed Labour Party branches “to be cautious, but ruthless” in their attempts to eradicate religion, as it was “still very influential among the people”.

Over the decades of his rule, thousands of priests and imams were imprisoned or executed. Churches and mosques were closed down and either demolished or turned into state-run institutions. The regime harnessed youthful zeal for its own purposes, co-opting students and young people to carry out much of the destruction. In 1976, the Article 37 of the Albanian constitution declared: “The State recognises no religion, and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in the people”.

Albania, the home of Mother Teresa, had become the only country in the world to have banned religion.

Hoxha's totalitarianism aimed beyond the control of external behaviour, seeking dominion over hearts, minds and souls. It was illegal to even possess religious books or materials. Edvin Peci, who studied philosophy in the last years of regime, recalled how the definition of acceptable thought became tighter and tighter. Hegel, being an idealist philosopher, was banned, and only some of Marx's thought was permitted. “In the end, we were just allowed to read what our leader wrote,” he said.

A comprehensive network of volunteers helped to enforce the law. By the end of the regime, it was estimated that as many as one in three inhabitants in Tirana worked for the secret police. Neighbours, friends and family members informed on each other, wives betraying husbands, brothers spying on sisters and children telling on their parents.

Ana Stakaj, the women's programmes manager at the Mary Ward Loreto Foundation, told me how her father almost went to prison for possessing certain books: “Thank God there were also people who were good, even if they were in power, and they said, ‘just get rid of the books’. The books ended up in the nearby river and he was saved.”