We Need to Recognize the Fact That the Right to Blaspheme is an Essential Right

I do not think that there is really much more to say about the religiously motivated shooting of staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris:

The police organized an enormous manhunt across Paris on Wednesday for three suspects they said were involved in a brazen and methodical slaughter at a satirical newspaper that had lampooned Islam.

The terrorist attack by masked gunmen on the newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, left 12 people dead — including the top editor, prominent cartoonists and police officers — and was among the deadliest in postwar France. The killers escaped, traumatizing the city and sending shock waves through Europe and beyond.

Officials said late Wednesday that the suspects had been identified and that two were brothers. They were identified as Said and Cherif Kouachi, 32 and 34, and Hamyd Mourad, 18. French news reports said the brothers had been born in Paris, raising the prospect that homegrown Muslim extremists were responsible.

Religion has been one of the most powerful, and most violent, forces in human history.

To degree that we as a species have any rights at all, we must protect the right to mock and insult religion.