When the Saint-Michel cinema went up in flames in 1988, there was universal condemnation. Even Paris's archbishop, the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who had previously condemned the film, denounced the militants: "You don't behave as Christians but as enemies of Christ. From the Christian point of view, one doesn't defend Christ with arms. Christ himself forbade it." The lesson was clear: making fun of religion is an integral part of Western societies and a right they will defend — no matter how offensive it may be to Muslims or others.

But then came another insult: Salman Rushdie and his masterful Satanic Verses. The book earned a fatwa from the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the founding father of Iran's Islamic Revolution and its unquestioned leader until his death. 

Condemnation for the death sentence that Khomeini issued against Rushdie and anyone else who cooperated in the promotion of the book — translators were assassinated, publishers intimidated and bookshops burned — was less universal. And, most important, there was a striking lack of prominent Muslim clerics of the rank of a Lustiger to condemn the violence in no uncertain terms.

By the time of the Danish cartoon controversy in 2005, it was evident that Western leaders and intellectuals had lost their appetite to stand up to religious bigotry unless it was harmless. Apologies and self-censorship dominated the airwaves — and though Western embassies were assaulted in the Middle East, we in the West found no better way to respond to this outrage than entertaining the notion that we might need blasphemy laws again to prevent religious sensitivities from being hurt. Suddenly, the cartoonists, and not those who wished them dead, were the bigoted zealots.

Is it any wonder, then, that the most instinctive first reaction to the September 11, 2012 attacks, issued on Twitter by the US embassy in Cairo, was a condemnation of "the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions"?