responding to blasphemy

The Danish cartoons were published last September and subsequently publicised throughout the Middle East by Muslims from Denmark. Now huge numbers of Muslims are making it known to the world that perceived slights against their prophet cause them great offence.

Muslims have every right, in a free society, to feel offended. There are even Christians who have some degree of sympathy with the fact that they are offended when a person who has religious significance for them is being mocked: for once, after all, it isn't Jesus who is the target of ridicule by someone claiming the liberties afforded by freedom of speech.

But still. In a free society, what you don't have the right to do is resort to physically aggressive activities in order to enforce your beliefs or values on other people - and that's true whether you conceive of a free society along Christian lines or along secular humanistic lines. In addition, championing someone's right to take offence according to their own conscience rather than according to the rules of a human government, and/or sympathising with their offended sensibilities, is not the same as accepting that they have the right to: burn symbols which are special to other people, burn effigies of their fellow human beings, surround foreign embassies in mobs armed with guns, set foreign embassy buildings on fire, applaud the fatalities caused by terrorist bombs, or call for people to be slaughtered, annihilated, butchered, massacred, and/or beheaded if they insult them.

If you make the equation that hurting a (certain kind of) Muslim's feelings will inevitably result in violent intimidatory repercussions, I want to know, why? What compulsion is there that a person, or groups of people, must behave like that, and that everyone else must put up with it? Can people really respond to provocation only in this way, and are we right to tolerate it, or treat it as if it was understandable? Are we really saying that these Muslims are so inarticulate, and such helpless slaves to their own hurt feelings, that they have nothing else to resort to when they see a non-Muslim behaving like a non-Muslim, but to threaten them (convincingly) with death. Satirical cartoons targeting some person who is regarded as holy by religion X may be very provocative, but it's only realistic for followers of religion X to realise that not everyone regards that person as holy - and if it's really vitally important for the rest of the world to revere this person with them, well, guns and burnings (a) won't really help to convince them of that fact and (b) it's always unjust and morally wrong to use violence and intimidation as a way of interacting with other people.