I admit that's probably a pretty obvious headline coming from me, but I think the recent troubles with the Danish Mohammed cartoons really underscore the point. Read the excellent Salon.com article on the story to get a sense of how true this is from the Danish perspective.

Jyllands-Posten, the Danish paper that published the cartoons (and requested they be produced in the first place), is a right-wing organ of the right-wing party currently in power. They were intentionally trying to provoke a response to get a rise out of their conservative readership.

On the other side, leaders on the extreme right of the global Muslim community, such as Iran, have been provoking people in countries, where the cartoons have never even been seen, to riot and tear apart Danish and other Western targets.

Where does this leave moderate Danes and Muslims (and, worse off, Danish Muslims)? Caught in the crossfire of the crazies who are trying to provoke a worldwide religious war as a means of pursuing their own political ends.

The problem isn't cartoons, or free speech, or rioting, or anything else. It's the right-wing leaders, of every religious and national affiliation, who keep throwing gas on a very, very long-burning fire. It happens in the US, it happens in Europe, and it happens everywhere else. And I'm fucking sick of it.