Terrorists cant stop Armies, Money and Oil.

[kandrathe]

Well said.

...It was to someone's benefit that a riot be commenced, or a series of riots, and this latest free speech spat was used as an excuse to have one....[right][snapback]101395[/snapback][/right]

My understanding is that certain Arab regimes have used the republishing of the cartoons as a foil for the political purposes of denouncing the EU nations, and to prop up their regimes Islamo-friendly image. Syria, which runs a hyper police state similiar to what Iraq was under Saddam, probably staged (or allowed) the riots as state tool to discredit certain extremist political enemies and arrest their members. My belief is that the governments of Syria, Egypt, and some other middle eastern politicians are responsible for inflaming the Arab street for political purposes.

But, the US and the West are not entirely blameless. As I said above, sometimes you have every right to do what turns out to be the wrong thing. For some muslims, the irreverent treatment of their prophet by western newspapers is confirmation of a war of ideas targeting and trying to discredit Islam. From your writing above I see you and I agree on the nature of Islam, and that to coexist peacefully in the world Islam must work to shed its justification of violence, enslavement of women, and intolerence of alternative faiths.

I believe the majority of muslims who live in the US and Europe want a peaceful coexistence, but they struggle to win that war of ideas against a vitriolic, violent, well financed and hyper published extremist perspective. So, we in the West, who at times are insensitive to the social and political brush fires of the Islamic world sometimes blithfully toss around gasoline as we please. It seems that in our new interconnected world, a Salman Rushdie, or an editor (e.g. Jyllands-Posten culture editor, Flemming Rose) can toss the match which sets the world on fire. I wholeheartedly support Salman Rushdie's and the Jyllands-Posten rights to publish whatever they desire, no matter how provocative it might be to the Arab street.

Maybe what we need is more insensitive trampling on Islamic fundamentalism, so that raw nerve grows numb. But, I doubt it.