Benito Giuliani whipped up a frenzy to cut off funding for the Brooklyn Museum. When you have that kind of civic power, you don't have to threaten bombs or murder.

In the end it's the same shit, different Messiah.

Oh come on. All kinds of films and pieces of art, novels & etc offend many Xians. They had seizures over The Last Temptation of Christ. But no one is afraid to show those films or sell those books, unlike the film Theo van Gogh made detailing Islam's treatment of women (and for which he was brutally murdered). (I'd wager Salman Rushdie would prefer that Giuliani had pressured stores not to carry his book, than to have a bounty placed on his head and some of his translators murdered.) Virtually everyone is scared to death of airing van Gogh's movie, and the sequel had to be made at an undisclosed location under tight security.

I'm as critical as anyone of the Christianists in the U.S., but they do not represent the terror threat which chills speech as some Muslims in various parts of the world do.

I believe different Christian sects were still trying to kill one another as recently as the trouble in Northern Ireland not too many years ago.

That is a non sequitur. The fact remains that some Muslims killed a Western filmmaker, and a Western author had his life nearly destroyed when a fatwa was placed on his head. Several of his translators (or others associated with the novel) were murdered. Westerners feared showing those Cartoons even after they indisputably came to have high news value.

Opposing lunatics such as Roger Simon or Glenn Reynolds surely need not entail denial of the serious chilling of speech (through terror) some Muslims engender.

Holy Cow, you're righ!! Sure am glad no Christians have never killed anyone. (no Matthew Shepard, no clinic-bombings, no Oklahoma-city bombing...)

And I've spent plenty of time reviling them -- I'm not a Xian. But the FACT remains that some Muslims in Western democracies are killing people, or threatening to do so, and thereby chilling speech. What is the point of failing to recognize that as heinous, and as an actual problem?

Not only that, the Jews killed Jesus, the Catholics killed the Cathars, and video killed the radio star.

Jeez, that IS scary. Who knows how deep this thing goes!?

I'd really like to see you toss off that glib and flippant nonsense to Salman Rushdie or the mother of Theo van Gogh. Or the Danish Cartoonists and their families who have gone into hiding.

It may make van Gogh's mom feel better that we invaded Iraq or it may not, but I should care what she thinks?

I have no idea what her view is of invading Iraq, and that is not the point. Waging war on Iraq (and Iran, if some get their way) only makes Muslims angrier. Those actions fuel radical Ismlacists.

Nor can such wars protect artists, journalists and writers in the Netherlands, Denmark, the UK, or in the U.S. The issue is a domestic problem, and one of poor assimilation to Enlightenment values. That is a serious problem for some Western democracies -- and anyone who thinks that almost no American media outlets showed those cartoons for any reason but fear, is in denial of reality.

Paul Hill, those who bomb abortion clinics and assassinate abortionists, are a domestic problem. We take care of it, and execute some of those lunatics. But religionists who kill to chill speech are no better, and that is what some Muslims do.

Didn't Ann Coulter issue a fatwa against certain New York Times reporters a while back? Of course, they're all still alive...but then, so is Salman Rushdie. Call it even, shall we?

How absurd. No one carries out any Coulter "fatwas," and no reporters at the NYT had to abandon their lives and go into hiding because there was a bounty on their heads. Do you have any idea how much that decimated Rushdie's life? And some of his translators (and/or others involved with the book) WERE killed.

Such "call it even" commentary, WT, does not belong in the reality-based community.

P.S. For some reason whenever I type in "@WT" it keeps reproducing an old header with the "let there be peace..." thing. Even when I remove it. [shrug]

Let me guess. You're a "libertarian", right?

Yes, and? I'm a generally open borders kind of person, but if I lived in the Netherlands, I'd be insisting that immigrants seeking permanent residence status or citizenship sign on with the civic values of that country. A nation cannot hang together without common civic values, and if a significant contingent of an immigration influx is overtly hostile to said values, they have no right to be accepted by the nation they seek to live in.

As far as I'm concerned, any Hispanic who wishes to live in the U.S. ought to be allowed to, provided s/he has not been convicted of a violent felony in their country of origin. Similarly, I see no reason why the Dutch ought not screen out applicants with a known background in Islamic extremist organizations.