When all's said and done, I guess those of us who live in societies where it's permissible to say what we want, and believe what we want, are the lucky ones.
If you take into consideration the whole course of human civilisation, you have to consider that those of us who fit into that category are in a very small minority.
And I'm not in any way singling out past and present theocracies, but
any governing regime that imposes restrictions on what its civilians can say, do, or believe in - providing, of course, that those actions conform to a consensual and humane system of laws. I find the notion that
any totalitarian society can convict one of its members of thought crime to be insidious, to say the least.
All I ask is that the belief systems of others, be they religious or not, affect my life as a civilian as little as possible.
This is why I so admire the basic tenets of the division of church and state written into the Constitution of the USA. Sadly, and I believe it will be a long time coming, the UK is at least century or so behind anything like that happening here.