Gartenstein-Ross aptly points out that this incident is relatively minor in the grand scheme of the war against radical Islam, but telling. His piece provides yet another, of many other glimpses, into the Islamists' single-minded fanaticism and their willingness to punish any type of ideological non-conformity to their radical ideology.

And the scope of that willingness to kill over speech is incredibly broad in region and in number. In October, a self-styled Islamic Army in Iran said it would like to elminate 210 journalists in the country, earlier, there was the fatwa directed at Salman Rushdie after he published The Satanic Verses, last year's slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and a death threat from Islamists for Tunisian Latif Lakhdar for simply contrasting how Islam is taught in his native country compared to the kinds of things done in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

And lets not forget that the note that was gruesomely tacked to Theo van Gogh's chest also threatened Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch MP from a Somali Muslim background. Ali was provoked during a debate and ended up blurting out, "It's my religion, and my culture, and I can call it backward if I want." But the real problem, insofar as the radical Muslims who threatened Hirsi Ali were concerned, was her admission that she had left the faith. Many Muslims believe that apostasy from Islam is punishable by death.

And these constitute but a sampling of the Islamist's assault on free speech. Gartenstein-Ross offers many more examples.

Take the case of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that has savaged journalists, critics of radical Islam, even the Fox TV show "24"-- (also here) but which just as steadfastly has refused to specifically condemn various Islamic terrorist organizations. And then there's the death threats in South Africa to Peter Hammond, over the book - "Slavery, Terrorism & Islam The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat."

And there's the Christian convert in New Jersey (yes, in the U.S.) that received a death threat from an Islamist - "'We will slaughter you like the lamb that you worship," simply because, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he left Islam.

The number of examples is too extensive to list, but Daniel Pipe's commentary, "How Dare You Defame Islam," sums up the situation in the U.S. (keep in mind that his commentary was written in November 1999 - imagine how much worse the problem is now) with:

Bernard Lewis, the renowned scholar of Islam and the Middle East, has noted with asperity that whereas, in a majority-Christian country like the United States, an English-language biographer of Jesus enjoys total latitude to say what he will and as he will, his counterpart working on a biography of Muhammad must look fearfully over his shoulder every step of the way. About my own writing, one correspondent protested to the National Post: "It's is interesting to me as a Muslim American to hear you, a non-Muslim, speaks about Islam as an expert without you first consulting with an American Muslim organization like CAIR for an example, to get their opinion about what you are about to print." In other words, one is perfectly free to voice an opinion about Islam, provided that one has vetted its contents beforehand with the Islamists - roughly the situation that now prevails in Iran.

What the Islamists are demanding, in short, is that the United States take a giant step toward applying within its borders the strictures of Islamic law (the shari'a) itself. A basic premise of that body of law is that no one, and especially no non-Muslim, may openly discuss certain subjects - some of the very subjects, as it happens, that CAIR wishes to render taboo. However absurd this may seem to a casual observer - Muslims, after all, make up, at most, 2 percent of the U.S. population - it is a fact that, when the guard of the democratic majority is let down, determined minorities in pursuit of anti-democratic aims can sometimes get their way.

The questions we all need to ask ourselves is just how long we are willing to allow the erosion of free speech to continue, and how long we are going to continue to allow Islamists to extend their foothold on the soils of our freedoms and democracy.

Related:
The death of an easygoing culture
On The West's Last Chance: 'An Islamist threat like the Nazis'
On Islam's worst enemies and how to defeat them - Part I
If you want to win the debate, win the war.

Islam is a dirty murdering intolerant religion. It appears that WWIII will be muslims against non muslims