Not a single item in our trillion-dollar arsenal can compare with the genius of the suicide bomber -- the breakthrough weapon of our time. . . . We refuse to comprehend the suicide bomber's soul -- even though today's wars are contests of souls, and belief is our enemy's ultimate order of battle. We write off the suicide bomber as a criminal, a wanton butcher, a terrorist. Yet, within his spiritual universe, he's more heroic than the American soldier who throws himself atop a grenade to spare his comrades: He isn't merely protecting other men, but defending his god. . . .

Our enemies act on ecstatic revelations from their god. We act on the advice of lawyers.

...

A dangerous asymmetry exists in the type of minds working the problem of Islamist terrorism in our government and society. On average, the "experts" to whom we are conditioned to listen have a secular mentality (even if they go to church or synagogue from habit). And it is a very rare secular mind that can comprehend religious passion -- it's like asking a blind man to describe the colors of fire. . . .

Those who feel no vital faith cannot comprehend faith's power. A man or woman who has never been intoxicated by belief will default to mirror-imaging when asked to describe terror's roots. He who has never experienced a soul-shaking glimpse of the divine inevitably explains religion-driven suicide bombers in terms of a lack of economic opportunity or social humiliation. But the enemies we face are burning with belief, on fire with their vision of an immanent, angry god. Our intelligentsia is less equipped to understand such men than our satellites are to find them.

All of our technologies and comforting theories are confounded by the strength of the soul ablaze with faith.

Or is it about culture and religion?

The West's current struggle with a murderous global Sunni Muslim insurgency and the threat of a nuclear-armed theocracy in Iran makes it clear that it's no longer possible to overlook the culture of intolerance, hatred and xenophobia that permeates the Islamic world. The hard work of rooting those things out will have to be done by honest Muslim leaders and intellectuals willing to retrace their tradition's steps and do the intellectual heavy lifting that participation in the modern world requires. They won't be helped, however, if Western governments continue to pander to Islamic sensitivity while looking away from violent Islamic intolerance. They won't be helped by European diplomats and officials who continue to ignore the officially sanctioned hate regularly directed at Jews by the Mideast's government-controlled media, while commiserating with Muslims offended by a few cartoons in the West's free news media.

The decent respect for the opinions of others that life in modern, pluralistic societies requires is not a form of relativism. It will not do, as Isaiah Berlin once put it, to say, "I believe in kindness and you believe in concentration camps" and let's leave it at that.

The proof of this is written in the facts on the ground. Across the United States, there are Saudi-funded mosques, teaching that nation's particularly intolerant brand of Islam. There are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia; they're against the law. In Iraq on Friday, the country's dwindling community of Chaldean Catholics prepared for more of the terrorist attacks that have become routine; there were no reported attacks on Muslims in any of the countries where the Danish caricatures were republished. Muslims in those places may have been affronted, but they are not in fear for their lives. No Western leader claims that Ferdinand and Isabella did not expel the Moors from Spain or that there were no massacres during the Crusades. If they did, they'd be howled off the podium and ridiculed into obscurity. The president of theocratic Iran claims that there was no Holocaust and people across the Islamic world applaud.

The European media may have behaved in a provocative fashion this week, but it was provocation in a good cause. The Western governments -- ever mindful of their commercial interests -- aren't required to endorse what their press has done, but they do nobody a favor when they apologize for it.

Or is it about the politicization of religion and culture in an increasingly inter-connected world?

But even people who hold fast to the bedrock principles of liberal democracy may feel the exasperating hand of a darker manipulation here. Because when forced to an impasse, the cartoon battle becomes exactly what ideologues in both worlds would like it to be: a proxy for the Clash of Civilizations.

Linking the far poles of civilization has always had its perils, not least of which is the temptation to involve oneself intimately in the affairs of people far away. It's been less than 150 years since the first telegraph cable was stretched across the Atlantic, making it possible for people in New York to know that people in London were cheesed off about something utterly trifling and parochial -- and vice versa. It's been less than a century and a half since the beginnings of a world that is now instantly connected, in which a contretemps in Denmark can be quickly scaled up into a rhetorical world war. It's odd, and rather sad, how little we've learned about the way barroom brawls spiral into street riots, about the ancient emotional mechanics that still govern the most important conversations of humanity.

Religious fundamentalism forced the issue; political fundamentalism inflamed it. An apology for giving offense is now capitulation to religious tyranny; the basic instinct of moderation is equated with cowardice. A little ink on paper is inflated to proof of a basic cultural incompatibility. So political leaders here speak of "the long war," a conflict with no sign of hope on the horizon between East and West. Now, rather absurdly, these cartoons may become part of the intellectual hardening of thought that will sustain the idea, on both sides of the cultural divide.

Or is there something peculiar to the Muslim faith that spawns intolerance and fanaticism, as some have suggested?

I won't link to that last perspective, which ought to indicate my assessment.

The rest of the opinions floated above have points worth considering, though I don't necessarily agree with them. It's beyond argument, I think, to say that Europe and the Arab lands took very different paths in their development, leaving each with values that are sometimes difficult to reconcile with one another. But the same could be said of East Asia, Africa and to some extent Latin America. Each region has at various times exploded against Western European values, often violently. Those cultural conflicts often mask economic disagreements as well. For example: Japan, it was claimed by the US after Pearl Harbor, was home to a warlike and vicious race opposed to democracy, freedom, Mom and apple pie. In reality, Japan was a budding parliamentary democracy hijacked by a military junta attempting to establish colonial control over Asia - much as, erm, Western democracies had. So for six years, the Japanese were the enemies of Western Civilization, then for another twenty, a client state. Now they're one of our closest allies and trading partners. What changed? Not much, other than that the strategic interests of the two nations realigned.

There is no reason to believe that the same thing could not happen in the Middle East. It's true that there's always been bad blood between Europe and Arab nations, but there's been bad blood between France and Germany for almost as long, and they got over it.

Nor do I put much stock in the religious aspect. The only specifically religious part to this story is the prohibition on images of Muhammed (PBUH). There's more to it than that, since Islam is meant to champion the Arab people as much as their religious philosophy. But from the perspective of faith as such, this is a very flat story indeed.

I'm surprised that almost none of the commenters I've read have picked up on some obvious angles. First of all, it needs to be said - stipulating Cole's point that the demonstrations started in Europe, not Saudi Arabia - that the lack of democracy in the countries where the riots have been taking place should not be put down to Islamic hypocrisy. Rather, it's a distorting factor. Good, bad or indifferent, we simply don't know how the clash would play out were the protestors to have outlets for their discontent. It's impossible to say. Some folks will no doubt try to make the demonstrators out to be chronically angry Arabs agitating for the destruction of Israel and Western values. Those perspectives are often borderline racist - at best - and typically reflect some other ax to grind. Or, as the Washington Post puts it, "the cartoon battle becomes exactly what ideologues in both worlds would like it to be: a proxy for the Clash of Civilizations."

That proxy battle is abhorrent. What, was Bush not kidding when he spoke of a "crusade" against terrorism? I don't know about you, but I'm not okay on re-fighting the battles of the 11th Century. And I simply refuse to believe that 1 billion people are violent fanatics or bloodthirsty savages.

Second, if this is indeed an essentially street-level phenomenon - perhaps egged on by opportunistic governments - it should tell us that those anti-democratic regimes mentioned above don't really have their populaces under full control. It's simply not within the realm of credibility that shaky governments in Gaza, Jordan, or Lebanon would intentionally allow mob scenes if they thought they could bring them under control.

And last, a point that perhaps is so obvious that it goes unsaid: Muslims and particularly Arabs have a lot to be pissed about these days. The war in Iraq has added fuel to every dark fire in the Middle East. People who were inclined to see their culture as disrespected, their lives devalued, their territory violated, and their oil coveted, have been given a hard shove down the slope of paranoia. Any middling student of psychology could tell you that given the deep anger and resentment felt among Muslims toward the West, the culture would lash out at the first available target. From our perspective, Denmark is a small, somewhat goofy, basically neutral country. But for the protestors, it's a symbol of a greater whole: years of oppression, hostility and abuse. The defenders of the "freedom of speech" misunderstand what's at stake, as do those who want to plump up an epic battle of values. While the vessel for this conflict may be cultural, it is at its heart about the same thing that most cultural conflicts are about: power, and who's got it.

Reactionary regimes like Saudi Arabia will have to clean up their hands if they are to remain politically and economically connected to the West. Ditto Iran and Hamas. The world community won't abide Holocaust deniers or those who would wipe out the state of Israel. But as Dr. King said, "violence is the language of the unheard." These riots, I believe, should be telling us that there are a whole lot of people in the Muslim world who feel that their voices have not been heard.