If I deliberately wound up an angry, resentful acquaintance to the point where he went on a rampage and murdered someone, I like to think I would have some regrets, that the important detail would not be the fact that it was my right to make the points I did, in the manner I did, but that I had caused someone to kill and someone to die.

Similarly, I like to believe that if a teacher called to say my child was insisting on her right to criticise the physical, intellectual and social shortcomings of some of her classmates, and that it was causing those classmates distress, then I would have a word with my child about her behaviour.

I would also like to think that were I the editor of a French satirical magazine, having just watched as swaths of people across a number of countries erupted into sometimes fatal anger over a film they believed had insulted them, I would not think: “Cool. Let’s see if we can stoke that nightmare right up again.”

However, an astonishing number of people seem to feel differently. The right to free speech is not in the least abused, it seems, when troublemaking hotheads decide their provocative opinions have more legitimacy than any other consideration within the complex matrix of human responsibility.

The worst irony? Despite the many differences between the Islamic world and the west, we have one vast arrogance in common: we won’t content ourselves with living and letting live. We each want our values to be universally adopted. We each want to be proved right. We each want to win.

Mass Arab street protest thrills the west when we agree with it – as with the Arab spring – and appals if we don’t – as when we see a heated anti-American uprising. Yet indiscriminate anti- Americanism is no more or less valid than indiscriminate Islamophobia. Maybe it is time for both western and Islamist hotheads to have a think about this, for example: “Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” (Quran 13:11). Smart advice. Works for everyone.

Islamists need to stop attacking the west, and issuing fatwas against those outside the Islamic belief system. Likewise, the west needs to solve its own problems, rather than insisting on interfering in the affairs of Muslims, while failing to admit that previous interference might have provoked much of the “Muslim rage” that westerners find so “medieval”. In fact, the finger-wagging criticism from Islamaphobic zealots is just more of the “We know what’s best; you do what you’re told” attitude that has already caused such mayhem. It is time for both parties to get a grip.   »»» The Guardian

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