Jeff Jacoby gets right to the heart of the matter in his latest column.

HINDUS CONSIDER it sacrilegious to eat meat from cows, so when a Danish supermarket ran a sale on beef and veal last fall, Hindus everywhere reacted with outrage. India recalled its ambassador to Copenhagen, and Danish flags were burned in Calcutta, Bombay, and Delhi. A Hindu mob in Sri Lanka severely beat two employees of a Danish-owned firm, and demonstrators in Nepal chanted: ''War on Denmark! Death to Denmark!"In many places, shops selling Dansk china or Lego toys were attacked by rioters, and two Danish embassies were firebombed.

We know, of course, that this did not happen.

But we also know that the mere act of publiching editorial cartoons has produced another Islamorgasm of violence around the world. We've seen brave European newspaper editors run the cartoons in their own pages as a show of solidarity.

We have seen no such courage in America, either in the print media or the broadcast media. Folks who don't mind offending Christians and jews in the most gratuitous manner argue that "sensitivity" and "taste" dictate that they not run the "provocative" cartoons. In other words, they won't offend anyone who will do more than write a nasty letter

Across the continent, nearly two dozen other newspapers have joined in defending that principle. While Islamist clerics proclaim an ''international day of anger" or declare that ''the war has begun," leading publications in Norway, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have reprinted the Danish cartoons. But there has been no comparable show of backbone in America, where (as of Friday) only the New York Sun has had the fortitude to the run some of the drawings.

Make no mistake: This story is not going away, and neither is the Islamofascist threat. The freedom of speech we take for granted is under attack, and it will vanish if it is not bravely defended. Today the censors may be coming for some unfunny Mohammed cartoons, but tomorrow it is your words and ideas they will silence. Like it or not, we are all Danes now.

Muslim author and critic Ibn Warraq argues the matter this way.

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

And so let me make my act of solidarity.

The fundamental principles of freedom matter more than the religious sensitivities of extremists.

Any Muslim who is offended by these cartoons and wishes to write or shout angry words at me has my deepest apologies -- you are not my target and I regret any offense given.

Any Muslim who is offended by these cartoons and wishes to do me violence can copulate with a pig.

Posted by: Greg at 04:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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