Cartoon Jihad no laughing matter

Woe to those who offend.

The "Cartoon Jihad," as it is now being called, is highly instructive on the exact nature of fervent Muslim religious beliefs around the world. A Danish newspaper's publication of political cartoons depicting Mohammed and other Muslim subjects was a test of the freedom of speech and press in Denmark. The test produced results - riots, firebombings, embassy storming and other chaotic activities carried out by Muslims around the world.

For Europeans, the events have revealed, once again, the consequences of "progressive," deferential policies aimed at accommodating the sensibilities of growing minority Muslim populations in nearly every country on the continent.

Europeans are learning the hard way that trying to constantly adjust and avoid possible offense to such a militant brand of religious fervor will prove impossible over time. But that's what's been happening - governments and media have bent over backwards to be tolerant of the intolerant.

And now Europeans should be freaked out. Everything that the enlightened Continentals likely value is at risk. Make a documentary about Muslims, and you might be stabbed to death like Theo Van Gogh was in 2004. Print a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with a burning-fuse bomb in his turban, and you need round-the-clock security.

The common thread is intolerance of diversity by Islam, and those who put a premium on women's rights, civil rights and gay rights may have to start wondering exactly what rights the militant minority will tolerate over time. And the situation will only get worse if left unchecked because generous immigration policies and disproportionate birth rates make it likely that many European nations will be majority Moslem nations by the middle of this century.

"We are now facing a growing global crisis. It now is something else than the drawings in Jyllands-Posten," declared Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday, referring to the newspaper that published the cartoons.

And this crisis wasn't caused by President Bush, even though many American liberals would surely love to extrapolate the "root causes" of the worldwide unrest and stretch them back to the war in Iraq.

The trends should be instructive for American politics, particularly for Democrats and the liberal wing of the political spectrum as they consider the terms "national security" and "the war on terror." These are the folks who need to take a good look at the world stage and realize that Bush, Cheney, Halliburton and the oil companies are NOT the enemies.

Why, even the much-dreaded "Christian right" pales in comparison to what has been seen in the past few weeks. Make a play or a painting about Jesus that's certain to offend, and you might get a demonstration or some picket signs or a boycott, but you won't get nationwide riots and death threats.

If Democrats really want to be relevant when it comes to national security, they need to develop and communicate a strategy for meeting the challenges of a world that can quite obviously produce another 9/11. Most Americans intuitively know that treating the threats of today as just another law-enforcement problem, or a problem that can be managed through accommodation, is entirely inadequate.

It is time to get serious about protecting ourselves and our way of life, because it is obvious that those who consider our way of life offensive are entirely serious about ending it.