This moment seems fraught on so many levels, yet I have been feeling increasingly annoyed by the tone of the coverage, which tends towards rabid anti-Muslim sentiment, or bending over backwards to explain and situate the anger of the protests against these cartoons. Both responses seem to me to miss the point completely, and perhaps speak to our own crisis in the West over defending our purported shared values around freedom of expression (aka speech).

The history of this freedom in the West has been tortured, and debate continues around appropriate limits, if any, to expressive discontent or critique. Yet, arguably since Luther tacked his list on the church door, the West has been engaged in separating, on some level, religion and civil society. This has allowed (rockily, unevenly, tendentiously) for the emergence of particular ideas and modes of critique to emerge in the West that, while controversial in and of themselves, reflect this particular history of dissent and distance between religiousity and citizenship. Now we are confronted by other societies with different views on these questions.

Which is fine for them, if firstly it were truly a democratic impluse and secondly not some reaction to Western modernity itself. But I have been feeling obstinate on this matter: that we shouldn't and cannot give a bloody inch in this debate. Yes, the cartoons for the most part were childish; Yes, the paper that originally published them was pursuing some quasi anti-Muslim sentiment; Yes, similar depictions of Christianity were refused by the publisher. But, as someone elsewhere has said regarding this controversy (I am paraphrasing madly here): Freedom of Expression is exactly the act of thumbing one's nose in the face of social and cultural authority, be that the state or religion. Was the electric chair and Jesus joke offensive? Perhaps. Is it in poor taste? I guess that depends on your taste. But someone won't be thrown in jail for three years because of it. This is a hard won right that globally only some of us can hold, and is not to be thrown over for crowds of angry, bitter people who won't like you any more even if you honor the prophet. We are in the realm of symbolic values that speak to other, more material conditions rather than the rules of representing or not-representing Mohammad. That seems to be so beyond the point that it is almost comic to see it discussed with any seriousness.

So, between sensibilties of sensitivity and an awkward, raw, and sometimes untoward freedom of expression, I choose the latter. The forces propelling this conservative religiousity, both here among Christians and Jews and there among Muslims (the vaunted "street") represent the worst parochialism of the pre-modern age. They are the intolerant, barbaric values of the tribe and clan. They are opposed to the cosmopolitan, secular, and urbane modalities of life which many of us depend on for our very existence, represented most viscerally by the murder of Theo Van Gogh. This is not a game or an intellectual question, this is for real.

If anything, that is the true "clash of civilizations," and the battlegrounds are here as well as in some other dusty there, whether through angry crowds burning consulates, the rise of "intelligent" design, or the ceaseless invocation of God by our public officials. Once this was considered indiscreet. Now it is de rigeur. It is high time for those of us who cherish and honor the values of the cosmopolitan meeting place around the world to join together in vigorously resisting and defending against both a simplistic cultural relativism as well as the very tangible danger this fanatacism represents to our way of life, which for all its faults remains, in my mind, superior to living under theocracy or provincial pastoralism.

...about 3,000 people being murdered in the name of Islam one sunny September morning, I might start respecting their sensitivities about cartoons. Instead, there was widespead rejoicing in Arab countries on September 11 by people who regard Osama bin Laden as a hero.

I have no patience and no respect for people who say nothing when innocent people are murdered and then take to the streets because they are offended by newspaper cartoons.

I can't believe the lengths to which some Western journalists are willing to go to justify these bizarre actions. Seriously, the "Well, sure they're burning down an embassy but the prophet Mohammed is really important to them" does nothing but feed into the right wing caricature of Muslims being unable to deal with complicated situations with anything but ass-backwards violent responses.

It's free speech, like it or lump it. If you can't deal with seeing a religious figure being disrespected to the point that you're going to riot in the street there is no defense, war in Iraq or not.

From what I've been hearing online, the editorial cartoons that ran in the Danish paper are NOT the ones that the "average muslim" (yeah, I know, just deal with the term for now) is being shown. They are being shown one that shows Muhammad as a pig and another featuring a dog humping a man bent over in prayer. These cartoons are not editorial ones but plain insults as any Westerner knows, but apparently that's what many Muslims think we're defending! And that's NOT what we think they are protesting... we think they are protesting real, reasonable editorial cartoons.

I hope Salon looks into this angle a bit more deeply. There may be more here than meets the eye.

Sorry, boys, respect has to be earned. And somehow rioting in the streets, burning down embassies, murdering writers, and whining isn't going to earn you anything. Iran has a neo-Nazi holocaust denier as president, Hamas still wants to destroy Israel, and the Arab press is filled with Nazi-style anti-Jewish propaganda and cartoons. If the Jews were as sensitive as the radical Muslims, they would have reduced almost every other country in the MIddle East to radioactive dust by now. But maybe the Israelis are calmer, because they have a viable, effective state, and they don't have to demand unearned respect from the rest of the world.