So what was the murder of Theo van Gogh designed to manipulate us into doing?
Or was it actually just someone murdering someone who was critical of Islam, because they didn't like the fact he was critical of Islam?
Or was it actually just someone murdering someone who was critical of Islam, because they didn't like the fact he was critical of Islam?
There are a huge number of rational people.
They would like to even the odds a little.
To do that, they will do things to move people from the "rational" column to the "extremist" column.
Being members of a tiny extremist minority, they have little direct ability to move anyone anywhere.
So, instead of simply trying to persuade more Muslims to support their ultimately futile cause, they provoke us into doing the persuading. By making Muslims into "others". Because when the KKK marches in Skokie, we're uniformly disgusted. But when thousands of people draw cartoons of Mohammad, they're lionized.
You have to be --- literally, you have to be willfully ignorant to believe that death threats to cartoonists are designed to cow us into not depicting Mohammad.
What bothers me about this whole thing is not that we're offending Muslims. What bothers me is that we're so easily manipulated.