Adm. Yamamoto redux.

Sandmonkey, in a remarkably prescient piece, warns Muslims of the limits to European tolerance:

This whole stupid [cartoon] thing, as far as I am concerned, is a battle of the sacreds. For the muslim population, Islam and Mohamed are sacred, while for the west, Freedom of expression and speech are what's sacred, and now the sacreds are butting heads. And while it seems for the muslim side that they are "winning"( there really is no wining here btw, only degrees of losing) for now because of the apologies that the Danes are giving, sooner or later the blowback will start in the west, and it will get really ugly for the muslim world pretty quick. So please, muslims of the world, hear me out:

Europeans, while big on tolerance and cultural understanding, are not going to tolerate the your intolerance for their way of life for long, and sooner or later they, too, will turn on you. The more you push them, especially with the kind of shit you people say at protests in their countries, the more they will start viewing you as a group of people that they can not co-exist with, and believe me, that's not good. You think your boycott of Danish goods is smart? Wait till the EU reacts and ceases trade with every country that boycotted Denmark in return. They won't do it to spite you; they will do it because it's part of the EU's trade policy and they will have no problem doing it too. You may think you are ready for this and that it wouldn't really affect you, but you really aren't. And this is not your biggest problem.

Your biggest problem lies in the fact that Europe has been taking your side on most conflicts so far (Palestinain Israeli conflict and the Iraq war for example) and because of this they may very well re-think their position, for very logical reasons. I mean, am I the only one who thinks that the fact that palestinain millitants are threathening to kill any Danes, french, norwegian or german people they may find in retalliation for the cartoons being printed in their country, is a little counter-productive to the efforts their leadership has been making to urge the governments of those same countries not to cut their aid and trying to assure them that the money will not go into funding terrorist attacks? Am I the only one who finds it a little funny that they are saying :"If you don't apologize we will kill your people, but please give us aid and you have our word that it won't go to terrorist attacks!"?

* * * *

. . . Please stop going crazy over this, because I am sick and tired of watching you lose it over a cartoon.

"How the other side thinks." Rantings of a Sandmonkey, 1/5/06 (emphais added).