The other day, a Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten (the Jutland Post), published a dozen cartoons caricaturing the prophet Mohammed. The response was tremendous anger in the Islamic world, and among Muslims in the West as the adjoining photograph of a demonstration in Denmark indicates, and demands that the Danish government punish the miscreants who had dared to satirize the messenger of god. In response, newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands published the cartoons. A Dutch deputy has posted them on his website.

The Spanish newspaper, El Periodico de Catalunya, stated:

The tension created by the caricatures of Mohammed published in Denmark and
Norway reflects the problems that radical Islamism presents to freedom of
expression in the West. Here, the culture of tolerance among different
belief systems (valores contrapuestos) is very distant from the fundamentalist
(integrista) intransigence of that Islamism which believes that it has the right to regulate our way of life.

Its position is that Europe cannot give way in defending free expression in the face of Islamist hostility.

Free speech runs both ways, of course, and condemnation of sacrilegious or blasphemous expression is to be expected. But the cure for speech is more speech, not silence.

The Muslims who have taken the position that the publishers of these cartoons should be punished demonstrate a fundamental hostility to the principle of liberty of expression. They are free to boycott Danish products (or anybody else's), and I believe they have every right to do so. What they don't have the right to do is tell those who don't accept their religious principles to shut up. Tolerance is necessary, but tolerance does not mean submission. It means that you are free to believe and to promulgate your beliefs, and I am free to promulgate mine. And as long as we don't try to settle our disputes in a traditional Muslim or Christian fashion (by stoning or burning at the stakes) that's fine.