Maybe she wants to offend muslims, its her right – i am confident enough that my religion which has 1 billion followers and has been around for 1500 years will not be affected.

As for that idiot, Choudhary, he does not represent me as a muslim and he never will. As muslims, let us show a good example for a change and try to fight this with the mighty pen!

Some of the wars you mention were waged because of religion – or religion had at least a part in it. Some of the hatred you see is there because of religion also.

Christianity, the religion which propagates love as no other does, used to slaughter it's own sects (the Cathars, f.i.). The catholic church also invented the Inquisition, which tortured and killed heretics in the name of the one faith.
Two hunderd years ago, christianity found a way to condone slavery.
More recently, catholics and protestants were killing each other in Ireland.
In India, hindus and muslims are making life hard for each other as we speak. In the south of Thailand islam rubs uneasily against buddhism; in the Phillipines against roman catholicism. And I won't even start on muslims vs jews in the middle east.

If man has destroyed much, he did a lot of that destroying in the name of a god – and not some evil god either: often it was supposed to be a good and just one.

I know, a religious person will say: that's all man's mistake, not god's – but without a religious drive, without that certainty that one is right and just in the eyes of god, a lot of evil would not have been ,and still would not be, committed. Maybe some good wouldn't have been done either, but I'm not sure it would cancel out the evil.
I'm not saying that everything which comes from religion is bad, or that without religion there would be no evil – what I'm saying is that religion seldom made things better, and rather often made things worse.

Leave religion alone, you say. But it's mostly religion that doesn't leave other people alone. They judge you, they want to convert you, they try to impose their own moral standards on everyone – because in their minds, those standards come from god, and thus are to be obeyed above all else.

Abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia... in all the so-called ethic fields religious people are pushing to have their values installed, for everybody. They don't believe in freedom for everyone, and everyone free to do as he pleases, because they - know - better. Even if you don't believe, they want you to live by their ethics; in some cases (islam) they even don't believe you can be a moral person without believing in some god (that's why the liken unbelievers to dogs).

Now fundamental christians and muslims alike are pushing to have creationism recognized and taught in schools, as if it had the same scientific value as the evolution theory.
It hasn't, of course – in fact, creationism has no scientific value AT ALL – but they don't care. They push and they push. It's Galileo Galilei all over again: when he saw the earth was moving around the sun, the church silenced him, because according to the church the bible said the sun moved around the earth, not the orher way around. Galileo held his tongue, unlike Giordano Bruno before him... who was BURNED for refusing to revoke his theories.

I don't have anything against religions or religious people. They can live their life as they please, believe what they want, say what they want, worship whom or what they want.

I just want them to show me and others the same fundamental courtesy.

And this means that they also have to accept freedom of speech, for EVERYONE.

It's simple.

If a book hurts your feelings: don't read it.
If a cartoon bothers you: don't look at it.
If you consider abortion and euthanasia a sin: don't do it.

But do NOT forbid me to read that book, if I would want to.
Do NOT forbid me to look at that cartoon, if I would want to see it.
Do NOT prevent me from choosing for euthanasia, if I would so choose.

Accept my free will and choice, as I accept yours – and we can indeed live and let live.

Muslims and Christians and other faiths...if your faith is strong...nothing will make you change your beliefs...(Ignorant Muslims in underdeveloped countries will be the first one to riot and kill...gives you something to think about...)

Live and let live...

Its not possible to make all those things a crime because, without any ambiguity, the Koran, and Mohammed called on all Muslims to be a bit mean and ... forceful.. in spreading their religion and in punishing those who would stand against it, although, oddly, in the begining is pretty much says live and let live but then it reflects the entirely human feeling of growing frustration and moves to a more forceful policy as time goes by (remember the koran is a chronologically ordered document).

There is a far more complicated situation going on there than what we in the west are privvy to. There would be alot of secret support for anyone who might want to be a bit nasty to a jew or a detractor of Islam than you might imagine. Like in most things there would probably be maybe 5-10% of them who lean toward this more .. nasty.. interpretation (and probably the same number who are just as opposed to it) but when you translate that into real numbers thats 50-100 million people who would at least sympatyse with it.

A second point about hatred in Islam, It is not the same as in christianity. In Christianity all people are created equal, your fathers sins and his fathers sins are not your burden and even if they were christianity preaches forgiveness as a central point. This is all tied to Jesus dieing on the cross for us..

But in Islam you carry this burden. Jesus didnt die to take away our sins according to Islam so we are burdened with them .. take this into the real world and this means that all christians carry the burden of the crusades, all jews carry the burden of any past transgressions, all westerners carry the burden of our profiteering past and so on and in islam the forgiveness bit is not really all that central. So hatred and revenge is allowed (just as it is in the old testement) because we "deserve" it because of our ancestors actions. Islam is the ultimate religion for holding a grudge. You cannot work off your sins.. your stuck with them.

Hatred and violence are far more acceptable than you might imagine to any reasonably hardcore follower of Islam.

I wrote: "That muslims today always cite this one law to attack freedom of speech"

what I meant, of course is:

"That muslims today always cite this one law to point out that freedom of speech doesn't always apply"

• In my first post I already addressed the difference between denying facts and "insulting" the opinion or belief of someone else. The difference is fundamental, as fundamental as the difference between "objective" (fact and evidence) and "subjective" (faith and beliefs).

Now as far as I'm concerned, denying facts is just plain stupid and shouldn't be prohibited by law (you can't make stupidity a crime, otherwise we wouldn't have nearly enough prisons), but in case of the holocaust it weren't stupid people who were doing the denying – it were just stupid people who were doing the believing.

There are solid reasons why denying the holocaust has been prohibited in certain countries (including mine). It was (and still is) meant to have a legal weapon against dangerous neo-nazi groups and extreme-right parties, who lied through their teeth to make the nazi regime look acceptable and paint themselves as the victims of an international conspiracy. They were (and are) trying to change the history in their favor, hoping, by doing so, to change the future in their favor.
And because a lot of people are ignorant and will believe anything if it's repeated often enough, even the most outrageous lies, something had to be done. The governements of those countries chose to outlaw that particular lie.

That muslims today always cite this one law to attack freedom of speech is, well, a bit lame, to say the least. Do they really want to be seen by the world as sympathizing with the nazis, and what they did in those concentration camps?

Believe me: you wouldn't want nazism to come back. Today THEIR TARGETS ARE MUSLIMS, much more than Jews: it's YOU they would put in those camps this time. (But don't worry: we'll deny it ever happened afterwards, O.K.?)

Western muslims of foreign origin also forget that, in those same countries, they themselves are often protected by similar laws: namely those that forbid blatant racism. Those laws could also be interpreted as a violation of freedom of speech.

• Freedom of speech is, as several others have said here already, essentially the freedom to offend (wittingly or unwittingly): to say things that others don't agree with and don't want to hear – otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it, and it wouldn't be freedom.

If you seriously maintain that, because YOU choose to believe something, everyone should guess your sensitivities and tiptoe around them, then no one can say anything at all anymore. Let alone mock or criticize opinions one finds ludicrous.

And I repeat: such a restriction leads inevitably to an ignorant, uninformed, fearful and unfree society.

This doesn't mean people shouldn't try to be civil. But then, I don't see much civility in the fact that muslims compare people who don't believe in some god to pigs and dogs, do you? You don't seem to care if that offends people – you only seem to care if something offends your community.

Well, learn to live with it. Frankly, it's very childish to protest every time someone says something – however innocent – you don't want to hear. And it's more than childish when someone thinks this gives him the right to kill.

If you (read: your community) can't answer criticism with arguments, but have to resort to demonstrations and even violence, it must mean you don't have any arguments.
Every time you do, you weaken your own cause.