& the "other"

Let me add this to the conversation, merely as another point of view, if nothing else:

Since 9/11, the assault on Muslims has escalated the world over. They have been treated with suspicion, harassed at airports, illegally detained, deported from Western nations, imprisoned for long periods without due process, and tortured in the most barbaric ways in prisons from Abu Ghraib to Guatanamo. Two predominantly Muslim nations have been invaded and occupied, with well over 100,000 killed. It is not a few cartoons that people are angry about, but the sum total of humiliation, violence, and misery that Muslims and the people of the Middle East have endured. Anyone who claims to be progressive, to be on the left, needs to take a principled stand in defense of the right of ordinary Muslims all over the world to express outrage over these cartoons.