Free speech is a basic human right—which part of “free” don’t you understand?

If you are not absolutely free to say anything you want, you do not have truly free speech. Thus, a democratic society that makes ANY attempt at limiting free speech is going against the foundational principles of democracy—as well as the laws of God. If you cannot say what you want for fear of physical violence, you do not have free speech. This is exactly what the cartoons attempted to demonstrate—and rarely has any cartoon made its point more clearly.

I understand that Muslims are offended, but that does not give them the right to respond with violence. Nothing you say to me can justify that I respond with physical violence. I have a right to use my freedom of speech to say anything I want in response, but using violence is going too far. This is precisely what all Muslims need to recognize and admit, so they can pull the beam of anger and revenge from their own eyes.

The fact of the matter is that as long as people are in a certain state of consciousness, they will always take offense. Yet it is their consciousness – the beam in THEIR eyes – that causes them to take offense. Because they are not willing to look at that beam, they will claim that you do not have a right to offend them. The reason is that they know they cannot control themselves when they are offended. They know they cannot refrain from using violence, and they know violence is wrong. So if they can stop you from saying anything that offends them, they can pretend like the beam in their eye is not there. Yet this is a false peace that is no peace.

My point is that when you have free speech, you DO have the right to say something that offends others. The propensity for people to take offense cannot and should never be the measure of how you should exercise your free speech. You have a right to provoke in order to make a problem visible so that people can be forced to look at the beam in their own eyes.

The problem here is that most people do not understand the basic function of free speech, so let me explain it point by point:
A substantial portion of human conflict springs from a lack of mutual respect between individuals or groups of people.
Lack of respect most often springs from a lack of understanding.
Lack of understanding most often springs from a lack of communication.
In the past, the means of communication were primitive and thus made communication between different cultures difficult. Modern technology has removed this barrier, so the problem is generally that the two groups of people do not want to communicate.
The refusal to communicate most often springs from a misunderstanding that causes the parties to break off communication.
When you are not communicating openly, you cannot know what other people think or feel, so people resort to making assumptions.
Assumptions often lead to negative feelings – people suspect the worst – and this leads to a build-up of tension.
Because there is no open communication, there is no way to peacefully diffuse the tension. Thus, the tension keeps mounting until a flash-point is reached and violence breaks out.
If you look at human history, you will find a nauseating amount of examples of how this process has created a negative, self-reinforcing spiral between two groups of people, leading with stark inevitability to violence and war.
Democracy was an attempt by the ascended masters to give humankind a tool to create and maintain a form of government that is not based on force, so that a small elite cannot as easily – or at least not forcefully – suppress the general population (as you see in most non-democratic forms of government). Yet for a democracy to work, there must be a peaceful way to avoid the build-up of tension between various groups in the population and also between separate countries.

The tool for avoiding a negative spiral of mounting tension leading to violence is free speech, which gives people the opportunity

If we must have free that will not result to problem in the country then equity must be followed.
Since Buhari became president, three universities have been muted and these are sited in the northern part of the country. How can we have love speech when a particular section of the country feel marginalized?