If Islam is ever to peacefully co-exist with other faiths in the manner that Christendom finally learned how to do, then it has to start abiding questions and criticisms without resorting to violence. Islam has to learn to persuade and to attract people through reason, not through forced conversions and coexistence through violent supremacy. Muslim leaders around the world still believe that our faith can only exist at their sufferance, and any question of their doctrinal beliefs has to be met with violence or demands for apologies, not with rhetoric, facts, and reason.
We cannot enable that to continue. We must demand that they renounce violence and intimidation. When you apologize and retreat, they understand that as a triumph for their religion, a victory won with force and threats rather than through intellectual engagement. This encourages more of the same. The West had the opportunity to stand up to the same angry hordes earlier this year during the controversy over the Danish editorial cartoons that depicted Mohammed, and many of us gave into the threats and violence rather than stand up for the freedom of speech, religious practice, and editorial commentary. In both cases, Muslims ironically proved the point of the criticism leveled at them.
Do not apologize for speaking the truth. Stand up to the threats and violence and make the world understand that no one of any faith or of no faith at all has to be cowed or intimidated into silence. Your predecessor, John Paul the Great, risked his life by providing a beacon of courage against the might and will of Communism, and he outlived it in the end. We won't outlive the violent nature of radical Islam, but we can provide the basis for Christianity's survival by standing against it now.
He says it quite nicely, and without the screaming.
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