but hey... I've never understood why cartoonists have continuously felt the NEED to make these strips ridiculing The Prophet that a certain segment of society holds sacrosanct. Especially when they have told you over and over and over again that they take this shit seriously and they will act decisively in the face of it.

It's one thing to criticize Islam, but when you are drawing pics of the Prophet Mohammed with his ass cheeks gaped, you are really provoking a certain kind of response. I'm not saying that summary execution is the rational proportionate response... but why go there at all?

And people will say "Well, we have to do these cartoons to show that we are free and we can talk about anything we want!"

That's bullshit.

Even in "freedom-loving" democracies, there are certain topics that you can't touch. We've decided that jokes about rape are intolerable, so for the most part, everybody stays away from that. In America, a certain kind of joke about race can end a career in an instant, so people manage to restrain themselves from engaging in that kind of material.

Why do you NEED to make these racist, misogynist and anti-Islam cartoons? You're free to do it, of course... but WHY? What point is really being made beyond just flaunting how irreverent and disrespectful you are?