That sound you heard over the weekend was of European popular opinion shuffling self-consciously several steps to the right.
I am not a habitual consumer of Danepak bacon and Carlsberg beer, but I think that I'll pop past the shops on the way home and buy both, tonight. After all, in the face of widespread boycotts across the muslim world, the Danish pork and alcohol industries must really be feeling the pinch. And it well help ease my conscience, which is currently embarrassed by the craven kow-towing of the British government to the sheer, unbridled fascism of the Islamist extreme right. The British government in general, and Jack Straw in particular, a man whose principles disappeared with his glasses in his pointless pursuit of an utterly unattainable prime-ministership.
I particularly resent the fact that the islamist response to the printing of some not-terribly-funny cartoons in a Danish paper is so extreme, so apparently universal, that I find myself sounding like a member of the BNP. For instance, I honestly believe that if people come to our country, with its long-established traditions of liberty and free expression, then they have no right to attempt to terrorise that society into conforming with the political and religious traditions of the dictatorships, gerontocracies, kleptocracies and assorted other murderously authoritarian regimes which they saw fit to leave behind. This from a person who believes in free immigration without quotas!
I have had two discussions in the past twenty-four hours with baffled, liberal, middle-classed Scots, each openly feeling hurt by the islamist reaction, and wondering aloud how such a huge chasm could "suddenly" have appeared. Of course, this is no sudden disjunction.
Our political traditions are traceable to 5th century BC Athens and her struggle against the Persian Empire: to what we see as the band of free citizens defending their liberty, their rights and their democratic traditions against the forces of despotism and oppression. This is, of course, an arguable proposition on many grounds, but one grounded on truth, and important as our founding myth, still powerfully repeated again and again in every artistic sphere (Minas Tirith, anyone?). And our traditions are shaped by the French and American revolutions, by the free pursuit of happiness, by liberté, egalité and fraternité. They are refined by the political thought of a score of generations, of Locke, Hobbes and Payne.
All this has always been alien to islam, which absolutely and explicitly demands, in the qu'ran, a theocracy. In muslim political terms, this would be the restoration of the Caliphate, which is a prospect too depressing to warrant discussing, but would involve an awful ot of hangings in Soho and liberal stonings of women throughout suburbia.
We already live in a state of fear. We are already terrorised. Why else have British newpapers and the BBC fought shy of publishing these cartoons? I wouldn't post them on my site! We accept the possibility of bombings on the tube in London with a stoic resolve, primarily because we're a well-educated citizenry who, in the main, know that we won't win the lottery and we won't be the ones that get blown up on the 09.34 to Ruislip. But we also know that if we go drawing attention to ourselves then there's a far better chance that we'll end up getting stabbed, beheaded, or otherwise given the opportunity to go chat with muhammed directly about his madder disciples.
So long as our pussillanimous government finds some backbone - oh, the shame of being shown up by the French for moral courage - then this is a struggle that liberal democracy will win. Not just because of our technological and organisational advantages, but because huge segments of society cannot allow us to lose: women, gays, Christians, Ba'hai, Bhuddists, Hindus, libertarians, would-be leaders of the Liberal party... we all have too much to lose.
I hope that it is true, and that these people are not representative of the wider muslim community. Lets see the much larger counter-protests.