The need to protect secular values and freedom

Salman Rushdie and a dozen writers have put their names to a statement in a French weekly paper warning against Islamic "totalitarianism". The writers say the violence sparked by the publication of the danish cartoons demonstrates the need to fight for secular values and freedom.

They are certainly right. Of course it is not only "islamic totalitarianism" the problem. All religious fanatics and fundamentalists, of any denomination, can be irrational and dangerous.