Let’s see. The Islamic State has murdered thousands upon thousands of people. Cartoons of Muhammad don’t kill anyone. Some Muslims decide to commit murder because of Muhammad cartoons, but if they decided to exercise some self-control and try to understand the lineaments of a free and pluralistic society, no one would get hurt at all over these drawings. That fact, however, has been determinedly and deliberately obscured, or willfully misunderstood, by countless numbers of people on both the Left and the Right, people who should know better: pundits, politicians, columnists, church leaders, and more, who have declared that if bloodthirsty jihadists will commit murder over cartoons, then it is up to us to stop drawing cartoons, and we are responsible for the bloodshed if we don’t stop. They have forgotten the nature of human responsibility, if they ever knew it. They have forgotten that the only one responsible for one’s own actions is the one who chooses to take those actions. They are capitulating to violent intimidation and bullying, which will only lead to more violent intimidation and bullying.

“Damage by ISIL no less than Prophet Muhammad cartoons, says head of Turkish Diyanet,” Hürriyet Daily News, December 21, 2015:

Damage done by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants is no less than the damage caused by that wrought by “Islamophobic” drawers of “intolerable cartoons,” Mehmet Görmez, head of the Turkish Religious Affairs (Diyanet), has said. “Today, the damage caused the networks, distant from any belief, reason and wisdom, who engrave the name [of God] on their so-called flags is no less than the [damage caused by] cartoons –intolerable by any means– by the pioneers of Islamophobia,” said Görmez on Dec. 21 in his message on Mawlid an-Nabi, the Islamic anniversary of the birthday of Prophet Muhammad, which is on the night of Dec. 22 this year. ISIL’s flag has God written on their black flag. Muslims are the ones to present Prophet Muhammad’s guidance to the whole world, Görmez said. “However, I regret to say that the biggest problem of Muslims today is that they have lost the status of being an example and cannot deservedly represent of our prophet’s message of grace and mercy,” he said….

What? That’s their biggest problem? Not “Islamophobia”? You’re slipping, Görmez.