Sunday, February 15, 2015

15-Feb-15: A question from December 2010 that never received a satisfying answer

Copenhagen, 2006 [Image Source: AP]
We responded more than four years ago, here, to Danish reports of a thwarted scheme to "kill as many people as possible" with several questions. In light of events in Copenhagen in the past 18 hours, here is one of them again, verbatim:
Is the essence of this frightening story really the struggle to defend free speech and liberal values, as the Danish prime minister said today? Or (which we believe) is it actually about the enormous life-and-death risks of hosting a militant minority within a democracy-minded, mild-mannered and liberal majority society while growing to understand (slowly, ever so slowly) that the hate-based values being incubated in their midst are not growing more moderate but rather are becoming sharper, more brazen, more toxic and more deadly with time?

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