We are living nowadays great transformations: social, cultural and even, philosophical and religious, one. Yes, philosophical and religious. In the XXth century there was a fierce fight bteween the totalitarians whether they were from right or left, being the wildest fight in all Human History. 156 million people died, in a fight to exterminate the opposition. Regrettably, the persecution continues in some countries even nowadays.
Precisely one of the most important sides of the persecution of the disidents is rightly linked to the religious persecution, because for the totalitarians there is nothing beyond themselves or the ideology they think they represent. Once and again all the totalitarians have based their existence in that rocambolesque idea without taking into account that reality is so complex and varied that cannot be contained in a filosofical theory or religious belief for all people, because then we would be killing one of the very best makings of the whole Universe, whether it was made by God or Nature: the varied species it contains. That's the reason why all the totalitarians insist in forcing people to wear uniforms, not only for those citizens whose jobs require them to wear it, but for all. They think that killing the physical variety are going to destroy also the intelectual one.
Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for all the others, the ideological variety does not die with that physical uniformity, but it just blooms with vigor, even if it's condemned to oblivion by the traditional media or other information methods. But, that fact, what can be at first, considered paradoxical, it's no longer when we just think a little bit about it: the human being, when it's confronted with its own reality, to its own speciality and conscience of being -as a permanent state- a unique human being, that is never going to exist again, understands that, he confronts the Hydra of totalitarism, just efectively taking into account his/her own individuality, even though he can be destroyed; or, he is destroyed, condemning him to be only a mere robot, in service of the thinking conscience of other one. Because it would be this last one who will think for him, having self-denied that possibility for ever or till he choses the other way.
All the XVIIIth and XIXth Revolutions intended to show the unique nature of each human being. That is why, the votum censitarium was rejected from all countries, just defending equality and so, that the ideas of each human being could be different and original, wherever they are held by the majority or not.
But nowadays it looks like that those discoveries of the Revolutions that closed a terrible age are misunderstood and so rejected. Even there are people that wanted blasphemy to be a crime and freedom of expresion to be reduced -and so abolished. The reason is that there is supposed discrimination just because their religion is critisized.
One of the first laws that the Spanish Parliament passed in 1978 during the Transition to Democracy was the one who abolished two crimes: blasphemy and adultery. The reason is simple: any Law student in the fisrt year is explained the difference between three types of laws that are governing our lives: social -whose sanction is only social-, religious -whose sanctions are only in the internal side of the human being- and lastly the ones who conform each Country's Laws.
Taking into account this note, and the other about the variety and diversity of the human beings, each one of them will develop their conscience in the manner that they are due, after their circumstances, character, etc. Even if that human being is gathering others for the rites of their religion, the beliefs of that human being are only known by himself and God.
But if there is no freedom there would be no real religion: not only in Christian religion (if God is Love and Love is Free, then you cannot believe in God if you cannot believe in Him freely), but in all religions, because that implies a personal relation with God, as I have said before.
That is why the cartoons are so important (you can read about them here: : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11). The objet of the "discussion" consists in whether somebody -that does not believe in a concrete God- can or not just joke about -for me the cartoons are not very irreverent, except perhaps the one in which Mohammad has a bomb as turbant-, or he must respect that God with the same adoration that their own believers. Even not to critisize it. That is only a U-turn to inferno: the inferno of the Old Regime and to an Inquisition even worse than the original.
Because religion is at the beginnig of a lot of ideologies -if we understand them as the result of the interconexion of ideas in a logic system based in which we organise our life- and so, if the religion is not critisized then, the ideology and the religion in which it's based is not going to evolve in time. Looks like that, taking aside the political backgroung (see The Astute Blogger), some Muslims are frightened to a rational critic to their religion, just because that would lead some to change God or to lose completely the faith in any God. That is the reason why the more extremist positions are held in the West: in a part of the world where not all the things are regulated, there are a lot of things that they can decide by themselves. And even, if some Western people that frightened by the responsability that the fredom brings, convert to Islam, some of the Islamic inmigrants may be just temptated to try what's life like when not everything is ruled, even how the married people have to be dressed when maintaining sexual relations.
So Imams must once and again recur to the Paradise and the 72 huris to retain young people -when even the period of being boy-friend and girl-friend is forbidden. And so the task of convincing them of committing suicide for Allah, to have the booty of huries is less heavy. This hiperregulation cannot be but a sign of complete lack of trust and confidence in the intelligence, maturity and subsequent responsability as an adult person. Stefania from the blog Unpolitically correct, names Galileo when, after the Inquisition process, he said: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo its use“.
If we deny the capacity to think and to act in consequence, if we are depriving them of critisizing what he thing it is, even to be caustic or irreverent -even believers will not be d'accord as I am myself sometimes- we are depriving him of his own esenciality, of his own individuality. We are just entering the totalitarism, even if there are some people who think that evolution as reasonable and praise the reasonableness of the Muslims.

(post in Spanish: here)