…at The Nation; an excerpt:

The idea that religion should be protected from disagreement—that’s the problem. Why should the holdings of any faith be beyond critique, satire, even mockery? Religion is not a hereditary trait. It’s a set of ideas and behaviors and social practices. Those can be changed, and have been repeatedly throughout history. Blasphemy is part of that process, because it encourages questioning and independence of spirit and resistance to obscurantism and unjust authority. We progressives are supposed to take a side. Galileo or the Inquisition? Rushdie or the ayatollahs?