Not only beliefs should get special protection, religious beliefs should get special protection here because:

• people are most strongly attached to them
• people are really amazing at compartmentalizing them away
• in every historical situation where any religious discrimination happened (almost always for some 'good reasons"), it had consequences ranging from bad to horrible; you would be extremely hard pressed to point any convincing counter-example

Dawkins' argument is based on him totally not understanding that compartmentalization is default state of mind.

Ironically I think this only applies to his thinking about religion, I doubt he has this same compartmentalization blindness in other areas of his life.