The attack on illustrator Kurt Westergaard wasn't the first attempt to carry out a deadly fatwa. When Muslims tried to murder Salman Rushdie 20 years ago, the protests among intellectuals were loud. Today, though, Western writers and thinkers would rather take cover than defend basic rights.
Oh, such appeasers deny they are afraid. They prefer to say they are just being sensitive to Moslems who might feel slighted by any criticism, no matter how mild, of Islam. Or they claim they are too sophisticated to feel fear from such weak fanatics.
I'm not comforted by our material superiority over the modern-day barbarians. It hasn't mattered before.
Our Western society is better than their barbaric Islamo-fascist vision of society. We should have the guts to stand up for our way of life, boast of our achievements, and knock down the new barbarians. But no, too many Westerners would rather apologize for the general backwardness of the Islamic world as if it is our fault.
