Out-Outraging Islam

As an addendum to my post below on the Danish cartoon issue, here's an interesting item from LGF, a monologue by an Arab comedian:

This week, we witnessed the power of the Islamic and Arab worlds to bring a Western nation virtually to its knees. I was amazed at that power. This is over an issue that the nation’s government had nothing to do with. All I can wonder is why the Islamic and Arab world doesn’t harness that power more effectively and change policies that directly impact our causes and our beliefs? ...

Arabs and Muslims are justified in their anger against the action of the newspaper. The publication of the cartoons may constitute a hate crime, which is considered an offense in most Western countries. They certainly should not have been brushed off as being protected under the universal right of free speech as they were initially by the Danish government.

Reading this, I think we risk trouble if we think of the Muslim people as an easily pliable, not too intelligent mass the mullahs can manipulate -- something akin to the Left's opinion of conservative Christians.

There is in this man's statement evidence of the willful use of Islamic beliefs not to enforce those beliefs, but to force them on the West. The power this man writes about is directed towards bringing nations to their knees (an amazing overstatement), not spreading Islam. It is directed towards manipulating legal systems in other countries, not shoring the faith at home.

Ask yourself this: Where do you suppose the Palestinians got the Danish flags they were burning? Whalid-Mart?

No, this it the strategic use of an activist element, something the anti-WTO demonstrators could learn from.

And since it is, I say keep running the cartoons. Keep being the West. Keep applying our standards, which say it's OK to touch a book or picture a face. Fight them with our freedom. Let's out-outrage them, and drive their mass of activists to exhaustion.

Update: They're rioting in London, yelling "To Hell with your free speech!" Oh yeah?