Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes.

When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.

Well, we're still in the middle of it. And it doesn't show any sign of going away. And these attacks that were - that seemed so odd at the time, with "Satanic Verses," because we didn't have any context for this. You know, where did that come from? It seemed to come out of nowhere.

If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which their countries' freedom will remain a distant dream.

Without water we are nothing", the traveler thought. "Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves.

To respect Louis Farrakhan, we must understand, is simply to agree with him... If dissent is now also to be thought of as a form of 'dissing,' then we have indeed succumbed to the thought police.

When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories.