Best wishes.

It’s tragic, but hardly surprising, when the instinctive response from those brainwashed five times a day since birth in a religious cult is one of anger, and violence. In such circumstances, a reply of appeasement and cultural cringe can only damage us all in the long term.

Good luck with this absolutely vital campaign.

You are right; we should be very careful about free expression. It’s a young, rare and fragile stance that has taken hundreds of thousands of years and lives to reach, and it’s still, today, possible in civil societies only. Over 70% of the world’s population still don’t enjoy it. Most of them don’t even have a clue about what it means.

You are also right in that freedom of expression isn’t an absolute right. Even in civil societies, it’s under attack and in combat every day. Which makes it even more important to defend sternly against any form limitation, whether proposed by well-meaning, tolerant people like yourself, or demanded from other, much scarier directions. Which is why this rally seems very important.

Now, freedom of expression is indeed an absolute in one sense; you either have it or you don’t. You can’t have 50% right of free expression. And eventually, the only thing that will help breaking out of intolerance and disrespect is the full and unlimited right to anybody to express their thoughts.