Limits of freedom of expression

The day before yesterday, I set out to write a post about the written protest against Islamic totalitarianism issed by Rushdie, Tasleema Nasreen and 10 other intellectuals. I intended to compare the Mohammed cartoon to the 'Da Vinci code' by Dan Brown, and to raise the question of exactly how far should we go with the freedom of expression; and is it ever justified to put a check on it. It seems fortunate that I didn't finish my post then, as a few incidents have occured since then, which bring out the question in a better way. On friday an article on the very same topic by Hans Kung , was published in The International Herald Tribune.
I recommend reading these posts by Gypsy scholar on the protest by Rushdie and the others and on the Hans Kung article. Also, to keep things balanced and in the proper perspective, here's a blogpost from the Muslim Student Association explaining the muslim sentiment on the whole situation.