No right not to be offended

In a long piece by Sam Harris at The Huffington Post you will find the claim that 'it remains taboo to criticize religious faith in general'. This is not quite of the same bizarre order as the complaint one sometimes comes across to the effect that opponents of the Iraq war were 'silenced', but it is preposterous all the same - particularly at a time when the arguments against religion of Harris himself, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have been so widely publicized. The claim should not, however, detract from the principal point of Harris's article, which concerns the chilling effect on free speech of Islamist threats of violence and the capitulations to them. (Via Andrew.)