In a sickly patient even a small cut can lead to a lethal infection. Both the terrorist attacks in France and Russia’s attempts to bully its neighbours are dangerous not because our adversaries are fundamentally strong, but because our political and cultural immune system is weak.
Remember the Iranian fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989? This had nothing to do with his book’s merits. It was a power play: would the West resist an outside attempt to give Islamic blasphemy law global reach? The right response would have been a joint edition produced by thousands of publishers and with excerpts broadcast …read more
Source: European Voice
