Andrew Copson at Humanists UK:

This morning, three civilians were murdered in France – stabbed to death and beheaded – by an Islamic extremist. It was a shocking and despicable act, but not an isolated one.

It comes just a fortnight after state school teacher Samuel Paty was murdered for teaching his class about freedom of expression and the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. France responded then in the only way a human rights-loving republic should. It defended the right to free expression, including to publish materials which may cause offence.

Sickeningly, today’s murders have been portrayed as a retaliation for that defence of free speech and secular education and it feels like this is a situation spiralling out of control. If it does, we must remember that there is fault only on one side here. Freedom of speech and freedom of belief are not crimes. But murder most definitely is.

Furthermore, the fact that someone somewhere said or drew something about a religion is a very minor fact about a minor incident, while hacking that someone’s head off is very major. There’s a disparity in proportion here. One the one hand: some people don’t believe in or defer to Religion X; on the other hand believers in Religion X rip the heads off people who don’t believe in Religion X. That’s not a match. Nobody has to believe in your fucking religion. It’s a religion: it provides no real reasons for believing in it, only fake ones. Just give up on this stupid murderous project to force all 7 billion people on the planet to bow to your fucking religion. The more you threaten the more we think your religion sucks.

[W]e have no reason to believe those who say that laws against offending religions will stop the violence. Countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Bangladesh are home to this kind of violence all year round, precisely because blasphemy laws give legitimacy to any vigilante targeting humanists, Christians, Ahmadis, or other minorities, safe in the knowledge that enough people believe violence is an acceptable response to those who offend you to offer them impunity.

That belief rests on the prior belief that submission to their religion is and should be mandatory. If your god thinks belief in him (women need not apply) is mandatory he’s an asshole; away with him.