Politically correct

Listening to a discussion on RT between the Russian interviewer and a French women in Paris, a journalist writing for the Telegraph one was struck by the influence of each persons background on how they viewed the the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo which was attacked a number of days ago.
Russia has been very strong in its handing out the retaliatory fist, for instance in Chechnya where the Muslim population were crushed. So whilst they are by no means soft on the Muslim population they are not favoured with the idea of free speech. As a conservative nation, well used to oppression of the individual they are concerned about the idea that free 'speech is sacrosanct'.
The women in Paris followed the French philosophical approach. People were free to criticise anything, there are no subjects off limits and that opinions were secured by the rule of law.
There is of course something that smacks of hypocrisy, of double standards in that racism has clearly set up a demarcation as to what you and can't say, in fact it's carried to ridiculous ends with terms that are innocuous but may upset someone's sensibility, these terms are banned even from speech, whilst depicting Mohammed in a sexual act is deemed part of free speech.
It doesn't make sense even if, a secularist would have religion on a parr with mysticism and therefore not of this world, religion and the characters in the religious story are real to the believer.
If the law against being critical towards a racial group or towards a group with a sexual orientation is there to prevent disharmony then surely being disrespectful to another group is equally bad.
Of course what flows from this is that we will tie ourselves up in knots if we restrict ourselves to being concerned about the feelings other people. We may be misguided, we may be wrong but we have a right to hold that opinion so long as we do not intend harm. Now the very nature of satire is to poke fun, but it's a close call as to whether it does harm.
If a Muslim is asked to turn the other cheek and not get upset why can't we ask the same of the other groups, currently protected by law and and by Political Correctness.
Freedoms of speech means just that and we have in my opinion currently got ourselves in a right old muddle as people are confused and bullied by "another minority group", the dreaded PC Brigade.