" You say they "were most probably imagined". Yes, but not depicted. "
I don't get it. Depicting, portraying something imagined is fantasy, is not real. Although i agree that some fantasies are important to people but at the same time no one is entitled to force their own views upon others. You may believe in anything you want but within some limits and those are where you start to go beyond your personal borders on to someone else's. Like talking about religion is ok, joking about religion is ok, but forcing others to align to your religion is not ok. And it doesn't matter how you may enforce it. May that be by extreme violence, mild social pressure or even school grading. I for one think that religion in schools is a form if indoctrination, a form of forcing religious views on to helpless children. I mean, i don't know how is in different countries but when i was in school we didn't learn religion, as in the history and influence on societies of religion and also about the variety of it and a bit of all of them. We were thought only about Christianity. So i'm willing to bet that in those countries where you can't even joke about it, the level of indoctrination is very high. Like if it would be after me i would definitely try to change that. But at the same time it's their country and if they are fine with it so be it, i'll leave it be. But they shouldn't expect to find the same approach upon their beliefs across those borders.
Also there is an interesting video on youtube from Lindybeige about escalation of violence. Normal people understand that and never go from zero to nuclear. Like no one is stopping anyone to respond with the same pay if they feel like some cartoons are so disturbing. Don't they have their own publications? But seeing some of the news articles about Macron being portrayed in different ways, with a boot footprint, an red X over his picture, or as a pig and whatnot, you don't see the french people and more important, the government demanding to stop the circulation of those images.
I feel like the logic is gone, people are acting without any common sense. That's why, how you said, i went off the rails because it seems we tend to give more importance to nocive structures and ideas than to actually focus on what is beneficial, what is real and important. Like education, public health and our economies. We need to change a lot still, to basically change out global culture around wealth, to actually act as good householders rather than scalpers. And bickering on trivial stuff around holy fantasies is lost time that we don't really have.