The name of a new Albert Brooks film. Good luck with that.

Trying to sort out the apparent madness in reaction to the Danish cartoons. Get Religion has a couple of excellent posts, one pointing to this Tim Rutten LATimes column that for many of us, points out a central issue in this:

The West’s current struggle with a murderous global Sunni Muslim insurgency and the threat of a nuclear-armed theocracy in Iran makes it clear that it’s no longer possible to overlook the culture of intolerance, hatred and xenophobia that permeates the Islamic world. The hard work of rooting those things out will have to be done by honest Muslim leaders and intellectuals willing to retrace their tradition’s steps and do the intellectual heavy lifting that participation in the modern world requires. They won’t be helped, however, if Western governments continue to pander to Islamic sensitivity while looking away from violent Islamic intolerance. They won’t be helped by European diplomats and officials who continue to ignore the officially sanctioned hate regularly directed at Jews by the Mideast’s government-controlled media, while commiserating with Muslims offended by a few cartoons in the West’s free news media.

The decent respect for the opinions of others that life in modern, pluralistic societies requires is not a form of relativism. It will not do, as Isaiah Berlin once put it, to say, "I believe in kindness and you believe in concentration camps" and let’s leave it at that.

Robert Duncan at Spero News takes a slightly different angle:

While the Denmark newspaper published its cartoons last autumn, the atmosphere really became volatile when a Norwegian Christian magazine – good going guys – republished the cartoons in January, and then this past week several mainline newspapers throughout Europe in turn ran the cartoons in support of their press brethren. The reaction in the Muslim world has been the burning and sacking of embassies, a Catholic priest killed, calls for economic boycotts against European nations, the recalling of ambassadors, and mayhem in general.

Oh, and did I mention the chants and calls for Osama to show the West how mistaken they are?

Muslim radicals must be thanking Allah right now for the ineptitude of certain European editors, who have done nothing more than to give fodder to claims that the West really is insensitive to their religion.

The Vatican Press office statement:

In response to several requests on the Holy See’s position vis-à-vis recent offensive representations of the religious sentiments of individuals and entire communities, the Vatican press office can state:

1. The right to freedom of thought and expression, sanctioned by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, cannot imply the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers. This principle applies obviously for any religion.

2. In addition, coexistence calls for a climate of mutual respect to favor peace among men and nations. Moreover, these forms of exasperated criticism or derision of others manifest a lack of human sensitivity and may constitute in some cases an inadmissible provocation. A reading of history shows that wounds that exist in the life of peoples are not cured this way.

3. However, it must be said immediately that the offenses caused by an individual or an organ of the press cannot be imputed to the public institutions of the corresponding country, whose authorities might and should intervene eventually according to the principles of national legislation. Therefore, violent actions of protest are equally deplorable. Reaction in the face of offense cannot fail the true spirit of all religion. Real or verbal intolerance, no matter where it comes from, as action or reaction, is always a serious threat to peace.

Rick Garnett at MOJ responds, linking to this Eugene Volokh post