I Can't Take Radical Islam Seriously

So there's been some rioting, and the boringly standard threats of jihad against the United States, but it turns out it was all just a big misunderstanding that resulted in the deaths of at least fifteen people.

I have little to say about Newsweek's conduct. I don't see much point in hand-wringing over what Newsweek coulda shoulda done differently. What I'm annoyed about is how thin-skinned radical muslims are. (And I don't understand what's so hard about being in a world where people disagree with your beliefs. That's common, everyday experience for me.)

Let's see — you think someone flushed a common book down a toilet. So you're mad. That's all the justification I need. Yeah, let's riot! Down with the infidels! This is a belief system I'm expected to take seriously, and give deference to? Puh-lease.

The second link explains that "[d]esecrating the Quran is a death-penalty offense". On top of the gross overreaction, there's also hypocrisy:

He said investigators had so far been unable to confirm a "toilet incident, except for one case, a log entry, which they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Quran and putting [them] in the toilet to stop it up as a protest. But not where the U.S. did it."

Shouldn't this case of "down with America" be immediately and thoroughly recast as a case of "down with al-Qaeda" by the America-hating radicals themselves? You know, to direct the rage against the actual desecrator? Somehow I doubt that the radical muslims who make such a show of taking their faith seriously will actually do so in this instance.

And if they don't, I won't.