This is such a frustrating issue. I have deep, long-held religous feelings, and I could be offended by any number of modern-day practices, yet I'm not torching embassies and rumbling in the streets. On the other hand, I know that I am no more inherently intelligent than the average Musselman who, at the end of the day, seems not to have a moral compass that points to Right and away from Wrong. Overall, it's just bewildering that thousands think fire-bombing is perfectly acceptable, no matter how offensive the speech is.

All in all, I'm starting to lean more towards Francis Poretto's POV, which is that (warning: very condensed bottom line of my interpretation) Islam the religion is utterly incompatible with the 21st century.

John,

I agree that the cartoons were in poor taste. But where do you get off blaming "the Danes" for publishing them, as if it were an act of their government? It was a *newspaper*, as I recall, that published them.

And since when is someone's poor taste an excuse for adults (mentally and spiritually) to riot? By blaming "the Danes" (who unlike some other European peoples, actually have the cojones to exercise their free-speech rights) for the rioting in the Middle East and elsewhere, you're excusing the rioters, who are mental and moral midgets, and should be pointed out as such.

And if those rioters aren't pointed out as mental and moral midgets, isn't that a form of "soft racism"? "Oh, those wogs-- a bad job, that, but what can we expect of them?"

If the Muslim world is going to ever grow up, it's going to have to get used to being insulted. We do them no favors if we bend over backwards and engage in the multi-culti sensitivity that you rightly despise.

Cartoons don't kill people. People rioting about cartoons kill people. Your logic here is precisely the same as that of the gun grabbers. Your gyrations to blame everyone and everything except the actual rioters is the kind of thing that encourages more of this kind of behavior. In terms of practicality, if success in WWIV requires thoughtful behavior from every media organization in the West, we've already lost. Our only hope is to convince the Islamic world to deal with thoughtless behavior.

I understand your earlier point, and I would rather have fought this about Rushdie, but to paraphrase someone else you admire, "you fight with the issue you have, not the one you wish you had".

And a lot of us did fight, in our own way, this issue when it was Rushdie. But there wasn't much of an internet back then, so our options were limited. Mostly to buying and reading the book, or going to U2 concerts (they became big supporters of Rushdie), little things like that. Those actions may seem like small potatoes, but it isn't much different from vowing to buy Danish cheese, or publishing "offensive" cartoons on one's own website.

In any case, you seem to have bought into the notion that all Muslims are equally offended by the cartoon and that their actions are, if not reasonable, something so standard that we have to worry about getting this reaction from all Muslims all the time, instead of from some extremists. That may not be the case; I certainly hope it isn't. In any case, there is only so far I am willing to go to keep friends and allies, and at some point (as in the case of the Afghanistan event) you have to just let them know that there are consequences for uncivilized behavior.

Here's an apology from some offended Muslims. They say they find the cartoons offensive and hateful and that in a democracy there are far, far better ways of dealing with that than to riot and promote boycotts of a whole country.

In other words, this site is put up by a group of people who sound sane on the issue. "Got a problem? Write a letter!"