Reading through the response of oD writers to this issue, I have varied reactions: Roger Scruton asks some serious questions in amongst his usual scattergun and hardly very pointed attacks on randomly chosen things about the modern world that he doesn't like very much. Sajjad Khan asks what seems to be a very common question from Muslims recently - which is what is the difference between this and holocaust denial. This seems to me to be a depressingly incorrect comparison. The holocaust is not a matter of Jewish belief it is a matter of fact for people of all religions and none. Saying that the holocaust did not happen is simply a lie. Now, the issue we have at question here is a matter of belief. Perhaps for believers, what is believed in is truer and more profound than mundane facts outside of the religion, for the non-religious, less true, but nevertheless these are different categories. To suggest further that the holocaust is an item of Jewish belief like the Torah is simply ignorant. Zaid Al-Ali's account of the Lebanese situation is interesting and confirms my suspicion that many of the protests being manipulated by opportunists, and are reflective as much of politics and multiple divisions within Islam as anything else. However, he too makes a curious comment, saying that "Muslims regard their prophet in the same way as Christians or Europeans regard Jesus. They therefore regard his comparison to a terrorist as being a form of racism against Muslims rather than anything else." Now, even the most fundamental Christians I know would not advocate violence against a a cartoonist who portrayed Jesus as a terrorist (even though there is even less evidence for violence on Jesus' part than there is on Mohammed's, where conquest is a matter of historical record and indeed Islamic pride). Further, racism is not something you can apply to religions. Muslims are not a 'race', as his own analysis of Lebanon shows. They might be anti-Muslim, but that is another kind of prejudice, and in any case, for many people criticism of religious belief is as legitimate as criticism of any other system of thought or socio-cultural organisation. Finally, it is just silly, and falling for the same kind of mistake as the protestors do, to associate 'Europe' and 'Christianity' so readily. I am European but have absolutely no identification with Christianity, nor indeed with those who drew of published the cartoons. It doesn't help to have such occlusive generalisations thrown about. Finally, Patrice de Beer - a voice of sense and sanity. And yes, double-standards all over are the problem... but whose single-standards are we to adopt? Or are there standards in between that we can discover... and we are back to Roger Scruton's questions. Message was edited by: David Wood Message was edited by: David Wood