The freedom to do satire and cartoons has been long fought for in may countries. In my country, Germany, most of the left caricaturists and writers have been in conflict with the blasphemy law at least once: Heinrich Heine, Bert Brecht, Otto Dix, Kurt Tucholsky, George Grosz, Kurt Weill,...

George Grosz did a famous cartoon showing Jesus at the cross with a gas mask in 1929 and the court case ended with a draw. Tucholsky, the greatest of them, commented then: "A religion that has blessed the battles of the Great War has lost the right to feel insulted". And one of his famous lines was: "What is allowed to satire? Everything."

Of course, this freedom was lost during the totalitarian Nazi regime and was fought to get back in the late 1960s. Totalitarian regimes (and belief systems are afraid of satire. In 1992 an Iranian caricaturist was sentenced to 10 years for a cartoon showing war-disabled Mullahs at a game of football.

Totalitarian thinkers are afraid of laughter. That's why we need laughter, and in particular laughter about them and about what is dear to them.

Wolfgang