Give Them an Inch…: This is where appeasement leads. After the protests over the Danish cartoons, many European countries appear to have agreed to do nothing that could possible offend Islam. No one should be surprised, then, that some Muslims have expanded their campaign beyond cartoons to include other forms of expression.

Moscow’s city government has refused to allow a gay pride parade because a local Mufti warned of violence if the march went ahead. “If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that—Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike ... [The protests] might be even more intense than protests abroad against those controversial cartoons.”

According to the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, “The cleric said the Koran taught that homosexuals should be killed because their lifestyle spells the extinction of the human race.” By that logic (I know that’s not a word I should use in discussing religious fundamentalism, but…) we should also kill the celibate and those (like me) who are married but childless. If everyone adopted our lifestyle, that too would spell the extinction of the human race, no?