Religious Freedom Versus Freedom Of Speech, the unstopable force meets the immovable Options

[bryden42]

Ok, So I am all up for free speech and whilst not a great fan of religion I also up for anyone believing in whatever they wish but an interesting situation arose for a teacher friend of mine the other week and I thought that I would field it to you guys to discuss.

It goes like this:
Teacher is asked by small girl (who is a Pentacostalist christian)
"how long can someone hold their breath for?"
Teacher (with alarm bells ringing) asks
"Why do you want to know?"
Little girl replies
"last Sunday the pastor was telling us about jonah and the whale, And I was wondering how long jonah could have held his breath for"
Teacher replies
"I think that that story is meant to be allegorical"
Small child gets Irate and says
"No its not our pastor says so, and he said that anyone that saidit was is going to hell"

Now there are a number of things that concern me about this story (Respect for elders and the brainwashing of small children not withstanding) what concerns me here though is the fact that after the outburst the teacher in question left the conversation and walked away, Why? because of fear of losing a job. This leads me to the question where do you draw the line between being able to say what you want despite the religious implications and religion being able to control what is said, for example the Hamas party has recently said that it does not recognise Israel and its right to exist or believe what it does (not an exact quote but deffinately the upshot of).
Of course I don't recognise any religions right to tell me what I can or cannot say or do does this make me an extremist? (of course I have enough respect for others beliefs to live and let live).

Any body else any thoughts?

[Astarael]

The Muslims who are giving death threats and having violent protests are overeacting, but I can certainly understand why some Muslims are angry about the slap in the face to their religion. Some Christians have had similar reactions in the past, recently about The Da Vinci Code because some see it as blasphemy. When something blasts a religion, the people of that religion have the right to be angry but not to threaten others with harm. It would probably be best if the Muslims calmed down and the newspaper delivered a qualified apology, perhaps saying that they didn't mean to offend and weren't so aware of the cultural gap, but that they stand on their right of freedom of speech. There's no need for the newspaper to grovel, but an apology would certainly ease some of the tension.