Tony (Blair) and Charlie (Clarke) are flapping their arms and hoping to fly over the cartoons. If the protests outside the Danish embassy are 'unacceptable', why is it that the small coterie of secularists and believers in free speech were the ones who were arrested on Saturday? Surely, the actions of the Metropolitan Police (trigger-happy underachievers in uniform, as the cases of Mr Stanley and Mr de Menezes demonstrate) actually show how ludicrous it all is. A small group of middle-aged NSS members go along and they get dragged off to jail. 
We hear that "The Metropolitan police announced today that it has set up a squad to investigate the extremists who demonstrated on Friday". Gee, these guys were outside the Danish embassy in central London. Why do you need a squad to investigate them? If you're going to arrest them, they're right there in the middle of the biggest city in Europe.
If the Met can't catch a whole group of lunatics marching through Central London, why should we expect that they could catch secretive and undercover terrorists? Not that I think they should lock up the protestors. That would only feed their deluded belief (and it's not like they are short of deluded beliefs - I mean, they believe in angels and prophets...) that they're somehow being persecuted. Persecuted? The government have just (unsucessfully) tried to push through legislation that would let them lock people up for up to seven years for criticising religion! This was a big bone they were throwing out to Muslim voters, and was a kick in the teeth for freedom of expression.
If cordening off theological ideas in to a little category where criticism isn't allowed is persecution, then black is white, the alpha is the omega and George Orwell's spinning in his damn grave.
We have an army of people who, for the most part, believe in secular and liberal ideals like freedom of speech. They may stain their exercise books with "social democracy" (or whatever they call Stalinism these days), but on the big things they get it right: free speech, free expression, liberty and secular equality. Why, then, do they rabidly defend insane and deluded Islamists?
They bring out all those tired old canards: that Islam is a Religion of Peace, that there is an army of Moderate Muslims out there who condemn terrorism and the insane "excesses" of their fellow Muslims and that the beliefs of Islamists are merely a cultural expression that we shouldn't "persecute" by, you know, demanding that they follow the same laws and respect the same liberties as us unenlightened heathens.
Under what packaging are the murder of Theo van Gogh, the attempted censorship of the Jyllands-Posten, the attacks on New York on September the 11th, 2001, the attacks on London on July the 7th, 2005, the stoning of dissidents, female (and male) circumcision and other life-denying practices and events? Do I need to spell it out to you?
The importance of philosophy is simple: it is a refuse truck for nonsense. Islam - a belief predicated, as it is, on the belief in an omnipotent sky-god deity, divine revelation to one particular lunatic, and a theology of "kill anyone who thinks differently" should be taken to the philosophical cleaners every time a member of the "Islamic community" steps up. Truth shall win over falsity. And it is a clear erring on the part of humanity to believe in a God who sanctions the execution of anybody who believes differently.
A faux-liberal may respond only that "the art is good" because they have pretty patterns. As has been shown, there is a simple reason why there are lots of patterns in Islamic art: because if you try and draw people they set light to your house and call for your execution.
