Live by the pen, die by the sword/gun

In the 99 years between Napoleon's final defeat and the start of World War One, anarchists were responsible for committing many atrocities.  They argued they were fighting the forces of reaction but sometimes they targeted 'liberal' authority figures in the hope of bringing an over-the-top response that would drive the masses to revolution (in the end the establishment figures signed themselves into history by refusing to refrain from war in 1914, which brought revolution in its wake).  Thus the anarchists targeted the 'Tsar-Liberator' Alexander II, killing him on the very day he was to sign a paper that may have led to a Russian constitution eventually.  It changed the course of history for the worse - that is what terrorists do.
Now, after the slaying of 12 people in Paris by Islamic extremist terrorists, fulminating atheists are demanding to blaspheme to the utmost while denigrating religion as their prerogative.  They don't look at the fact that one of the dead was a Muslim policeman, just as the terrorists dismissed him when they executed him cold blood while he begged for his life.  The terrorists' alleged motive may have been some cartoons long ago by a Danish agent-provocateur that bordered on racism but as the late editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier, 'Charb' said, "When activists need a pretext to justify their violence they always find it."  In reality, in common with other millennial Islamic lone wolf extremists, they may have hoped to induce a wrong-headed public backlash against ordinary Muslims who abhor such cruelty, which may result in further alienation and maybe future grounds for recruitment into extremist ranks by others who can't find any other way to validate their own worthless existences other than by taking the lives of others.  In this way, those self-righteous atheists may be playing right into the hands of the terrorists.
One does not need to publish near-racist cartoons to 'win' freedom of speech, as dullard atheist voices claim (Nick Clegg, looking at you, for instance).  Of course, the state regulates free speech in itself.  In Germany, it is illegal to glorify Nazism.  In the UK, racial or religiously motivated insults come under the purview of the justice system.  In France, it is an imprisonable offence to deny the Armenian holocaust.  So all those quoting Voltaire - "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." - are 21st century politically correct hypocrites - they wouldn't agree with Twitter arseholes who issue rape threats to people and certainly wouldn't defend to the death the right to say  it.  Je suis pas Charlie - I am not Charlie.  Free speech is not only about pissing off people needlessly just because you can.  That is not free speech, that is just immaturity.  Satire needs precision.  As  one Charlie Hebdo staffer (who survived the attack), Laurent Léger, said in 2012 explaining the motivation behind the cartoons, "The aim is to laugh. ... We want to laugh at the extremists - every extremist. They can be Muslim, Jewish, Catholic. Everyone can be religious, but extremist thoughts and acts we cannot accept."  An interesting viewpoint because it doesn't aspire to laugh at atheist extremists too.  Private Eye, the closest UK equivalent to Charlie Hebdo, is more of a truly anti-everything publication because no-one escapes its satire, instead of just targeting religions and politicians.  Like virtually every other UK outlet, it declined to publish the Danish cartoons when they became available, probably because they weren't funny.  Charlie Hebdo was being ideological rather than amusing when it did go ahead.
After the firebomb attack on the offices when it made Muhammad 'guest editor', Charb said, "I don't have a wife or kids," explaining his fearlessness.  Maybe his colleagues felt the same way.  But they do leave someone behind (former Charlie Hebdo director Philippe Val for example) and had a duty of care not to self-censorship but be more intelligent in how they criticised religions.  Making the Prophet a guest editor was exquisite in that regard.  It's not black-and-white between self-censorship and freedom of speech as demagogues, it's about nuance and being smart.
The lives of these terrorists are worth just spit in the wind and every person they have killed was worth a 1,000 of what they are.  They want to die in a death-by-cop scenario so twisted have their minds become, ironically because of the freedom of speech afforded to Islamic extremist hate preachers.  Go figure, atheists.  But like so many Muslims who have embraced nihilistic violence, they have become heretics.  The proscription on the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad has been described as being impossible to display the embodiment of human beauty.  It is more prosaic than that.  It is avoid idolatry.  When the Paris terrorists shouted "The Prophet has been avenged," 'Allahu Akbar' was almost an afterthought, if evenly consciously thought.  In their minds, the Prophet has become more important than God.  Roman Catholics may venerate the Pope but they wouldn't elevate him to the level of a deity.  These terrorists are stupid because of their bloodlust and hatred of all life (witness the killing of the Muslim policeman) and this is another aspect of their stupidity, having a very limited understanding of the Koran.  As Alexander Pope wrote, "A little learning is a dangerous thing;/ Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:/ There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain/ And drinking largely sobers us again."  These dickheads were the equivalent of the angry drunk who lashes out at any slight, perceived or otherwise.  The poisonous philosophy that they have imbibed is the greatest generational challenge to normality in leading countries since the end of the Cold War. New York, Washington D.C., Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, Moscow, London, Mumbai, Boston, Kunming (in China) and other places can all attest to that.  It is more than just cutting off the head of the snake (such as the killing of Osama bin Laden).  It is about having having a rapidly different approach.  Blaspheming as much as possible is the idiot's approach.