Thank you for not speaking freely

Akbar Ahmed's commentary in Newsweek shows the twists and turns we take when we are boundlessly deferential to religion.

I'm sure his heart is in the right place, wishing we could all co-exist a little better. But he swings and misses in his attempt to promote peace between the free-speech West and the fundamentalist Muslims it upsets.

For one thing, he praises the Pope's apology to Muslims. This makes little sense, because the Pope has not repudiated his controversial remarks (where he quoted a 14th-century slam of Islam). I guess if people are religious, you're just supposed to cut them a lot of slack, even if when they're trash-talking another religion.

Ahmed's "can't we all get along?" tone sugarcoats a chilling message: you really shouldn't exercise free speech, because people will kill you for dissing their invisible friends.

Although I totally support free speech and freedom of expression, and have been saying so publicly, all of us need to be sensitive to the culture and traditions of other faiths. I am not talking of a purely academic or idealistic discussion but the possibility of people losing their lives as a result of some perceived attack on faith made across the world. I believe that the lives lost and the properties destroyed — including mosques and churches — after the Danish cartoons controversy erupted could have been avoided had there been people of greater wisdom and compassion at the start of the crisis.

Sorry, but when people murder their fellow man because of cartoons, why should we be "sensitive" about the belief system that drove them to it? If I kill someone because I didn't like yesterday's "Family Circus," I can't reasonably expect people to be sympathetic. Unless it was one of those creepy ones with the ghost-angel grandpa.

If Ahmed asks for militant Muslims to lighten up, it's only as payback for our self-censorship:

It is time for Muslims to reciprocate these gestures. As a Muslim committed to interfaith dialogue, I would appeal to the president of Iran not to make provocative remarks about the Holocaust nor to threaten the Jewish population with extermination. It is time for all of us to think about the boldness of the theater owners in Germany. They did, after all, stop a production of Mozart, the quintessential iconic Germanic figure, in order to express their belief in the dialogue of and understanding between civilizations.

This sounds friendly and all, but it's basically saying "religious fundamentalist killers have intimidated the West out of showing a two-hundred-year-old opera, so won't you please stop denying — and talking up — genocide?"

How about we make a different deal, where people of all points of view are able to speak freely, without fear, including the right to criticize each other for saying something thoughtless or untrue?