The "Religion of Pieces"

The Cartoon War became deadlier over the last few days, with dozens killed in Nigeria as Muslim rioters targeted Christians and burned down churches, five killed in Pakistan when security forces battled thousands of protestors, and 11 people dying in Libya after police opened fire on protestors in Benghazi.

Meanwhile hundreds of Muslim rioters attacked the US Embassy in Indonesia, Palestinians burned more of their seemingly endless supply of Danish flags, as did thousands of Muslims in India and Turkey, and several journalists were arrested in Yemen and Algeria for even daring to publish the "offensive" Muhammad cartoons. There was also another protest march in London, and the U.S. saw its first demonstration over the dreaded drawings, as hundreds rallied at the Danish Consulate in New York City, where the photo displayed here was taken (via Gateway Pundit).

This weekend Mark Steyn had one of his usual brilliant, funny, and dead-on columns about what he calls "the religion of pieces", and related a chilling tableau from Norway last week:

Surrounded by cabinet ministers and a phalanx of imams, Velbjorn Selbekk, the editor of an obscure Christian publication called Magazinet, issued an abject public apology for reprinting the Danish Muhammed cartoons. He had initially stood firm in the face of Muslim death threats and the usual lack of support from Europe's political class, but in the end Mr. Selbekk was prevailed upon to recant and the head of Norway's Islamic Council, Mohammed Hamdan, graciously accepted the apology and assured the prostrate editor that he was now under his personal protection.

As the American author Bruce Bawer commented, "It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom."

More apologies and appeasement will only embolden the Islamofascists, a lesson many of our European friends have yet to learn.