"Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoonist goes into hiding on FBI advice

right - you think they should be doing. that's fine and all, but the point is you're assuming _they_ should view the world the way you do. which they clearly do not.

("they", of course, being millions of people, or at least their religious leaders. let's leave the issue of painting such a large and diverse population with the same brush for another time, shall we?")

So it won't be Muslims that are doing the burning and violent demonstration then?

Perhaps it's a stretch but this is clear - someone drew a picture suggesting that Islam may not be completely peaceful and the resulting self-enragement led to Muslims causing many deaths and much violent destruction around the world.

IMO it was simply a decision to be offended in order to excuse violent demonstration and terrorise none Muslims into submission, and it seems to have worked well.

http://zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_full... some Islamic depictions of Mohammed http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2006/02/04/shall-we-now-bur...

This is, of course, precisely their strategy. By being irrational and murderous every time their demands are not met, they slowly advance in the cultural war.

First, they stop us from drawing their prophet. Once that gain is cemented, they can start agitating for something else: maybe they'll tell us that our eating pork is offensive to them. And it'll take a while, but by a combination of extremists who actively kill people who eat pork and "moderates" who merely sit around tut-tutting and saying that while they personally deplore violence they can certainly see how somebody else might get upset about it.

Then alcohol, then unveiled women, then... who knows? The eventual goal is, of course, to eradicate everything other than Islam, and while I don't think you can get there from here, I can at least see how they think you can get there from here.

As such, I applaud anyone who is willing to stand up and say "No, sod off" to the whole idea.

It is peoples' own choice if they want to heed this or not. I personally would avoid angering a group any group of murderous extremists, no matter their religious affiliation.

I might be crazy but to me that reads as "people should just avoid doing anything that could possibly offend extremist muslims".

When someone tells us to shut up or they will kill us, Americans have only talked louder.

Our principles have never been free of cost.

During the Civil Rights movement in the south, Rabbi William B. Silverman stood up for the rights of blacks. Some racists threatened him and his children. Instead of backing down or running away, he got a .38spl revolver (and became a deputy sheriff), and drove his kids to school every day vs. having them ride the bus; no one touched him.

From a practical perspective, is it a bigger sacrifice to change your name, give up your job, and go into hiding, or to spend a few thousand dollars becoming credibly able to defend yourself with a firearm?

However, owning and carrying a firearm is a great defence against muggers and burglars, but a lousy defence against assassins. The thing about gunfights is that the guy who shoots first has a huge advantage.

Non-law-abiding potential-assassins aren't going to have difficulty becoming non-law-abiding armed potential-assassins. Armed but historically fairly incompetent assassin vs. somewhat trained, alert, armed target has a lot better odds for her than vs. an unaware target. She would get more value out of training than the weapon itself, in that it would allow her to spot threats, but there are definitely situations where then being armed would be the best response to a threat (particularly in the hope).