There was an Islamic cleric called Muawiya back around the 7th century who wrote ‘I never apply a sword when a lash suffices, nor the lash when my tongue is enough. If there is even one thread binding me to my fellow man I do not let it break. If he pulls, I loosen, if he loosens, I pull.’ I’m not a great scholar of Islam by any means, but the principle there I think is very sound: you only use the minimum of force in any given situation to get the results needed, and sometimes you need to give ground as much as take it. The fuss about the cartoons strikes me as a situation where some flexibility is needed to preserve the ‘one thread’ binding multicultural societies together.