Religious intolerance or freedom of speech.

[Watchman]

*snip*

"I'm not racist, I have good reasons to dislike foreigners!"

Don't they all ?

Besides, I consider the way you persistently use the blatantly derogatory term "boomski's" (which is fairly obviously roughly equal to "nigger", "kaffir", "rag-head", "kook" and all the other classics) when referring to Muslims in general and Arabs in particular to be telling enough.

Which just goes to prove; boorishness is something nobody has any monopoly on.

That said, I agree with the point that the overall Muslim reaction is way over the top. Alas, since I also bother exterting the mental effort to try and understand *why* this is so (instead of settling for such vulgar, clearly intolerant and patently useless postulations as "Islam is nothing more then a violent sect that should have no place in the civilised world"), I can to an extent sympathize with them. To give you the short form, I think it's partly a way of venting more general uneasiness, anxiety and frustration over phenomenoms far beyond the control of the common man against a simple, easily identified, polarizing and remotely justified offense. 'Course, the same applies to the hardline anti-muslim reactions one can also witness in these very forums; I'm a big fan of considering all human beings equal in potential narrow-minded boorishness and misplaced outrage.

And partly it's opportunistic powers-that-be trying to shift the spotlight away from their own usually quite considerable shortcomings, and partly opportunistic extremists making use of the laden anxiety and a good window of opportunity to further their own causes. Which, again, applies equally here too.