Via Reuters, here’s the latest on what’s happening in the Muslim world:

Angry Lebanese demonstrators torched the Danish consulate in Beirut on Sunday, further escalating a violent turn in protests over the publication by European newspapers of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

Thousands of protesters, some carrying green Islamic flags, chanted “God is Greatest” outside the burning building as thick black smoke billowed into the sky.

Some stood on top of a fire engine, one of three damaged by protesters to prevent fire fighters putting the blaze out.

It was not immediately clear if the building was empty.

On Saturday furious Syrians had set fire to the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. They also damaged the Swedish embassy and tried to storm the French mission but were held off by riot police.

Associated Press adds this:

The trouble in Lebanon threatened to take a sectarian spin as protesters stoned the nearby St. Maroun Church, one of the city’s main Maronite Catholic churches, and private property in Ashrafieh, a Christian area near Beirut’s commercial district.

WaPo:

[I]n the streets, fistfights broke out between Christian and Muslim Lebanese, after protesters threw rocks at a Maronite Catholic Church, broke windows at the Lebanese Red Cross office and shattered windshields of cars. Bands of Christian youths congregated with sticks and iron bars, promising to defend their neighborhoods.

Video at BBC News.

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Jeff Jacoby: “We are all Danes now”

Mark Steyn: “‘Sensitivity’ can have brutal consequences”

Excerpt:

Jyllands-Posten wasn’t being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point — or, at any rate, a more serious one than Britney Spears or Terence McNally. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of “self-censorship” — i.e., a climate in which there’s no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it’s better not to.

That’s the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they’ll marvel at how easy it all was. You don’t need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that’s a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural “sensitivity,” the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want — including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers…

David Warren: “The Rage”

Austin Bay: It’s not a row. It’s a war.

Instapundit’s Glenn and Helen podcast is up: Timely and excellent as usual. Guests are Austin Bay, Jim Dunnigan of StrategyPage and milblogger Michael Yon. Must-listen.

The Small Wars Journal has a comprehensive repository of news links and background on the escalating war.

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