At the risk of being accused of being too literal, Muslims aren't bees. They're human beings. The only way this "poking a beehive" analogy works is if you treat Muslims like animals lacking in any higher cognitive function, and being instead purely reactive on a very basic level such that they can't/shouldn't be held responsible for their actions. As though it is the rest of the world's job to contain them and not upset them, because Lord knows they can't help themselves. No. Nobody forced any Muslim to watch the anti-Muhammad film (and indeed, most who rioted and destroyed people and property over it never saw the video), and nobody forced them to react violently to it. I absolutely refuse to validate their collective mental psychosis by framing things in any other way. If Islam is as peaceful as we're constantly being told it is by Muslims and non-Muslim sycophants, then it makes no sense to
expect Muslims to behave like violent animals, nor to hold the corollary view that the non-Muslim world must align itself with the most easily offended, ego-driven people on the face of the planet. On the contrary, I expect them to behave like decent human beings, because not killing people over an amateur movie really shouldn't be a hallmark of "good Muslims" any more than of "good Bahais", "good Jews", or "good people named Doug", "good left-handed people", "good people who prefer dogs to cats", etc. That's standard, everyday, par for the course
not being a psychopath, and it's something that all people everywhere regardless of their religion should be able to manage. If they can't, they are dangerously unstable and should be treated as such, not excused or justified or rationalized away with comparisons to bees or anything else that is fundamentally a different type of thing and hence very useless for comparative purposes. (Though, hypothetically, if a swarm of bees attacked the U.S. embassy in Libya, they'd be exterminated, right? Nobody would waste time finding a beekeeper to blame for the attack, because that's less important than dealing with the fact that there are bees attacking an embassy full of people who could be hurt by them.)
The bottom line is that Muslims don't (get to) have more feelings than the rest of us. They're made of the same stuff, they live on the same planet, and they need to learn to freaking deal with life, and for our part those of us who are freely able to discuss these things ought to start making demands of our own so that they know what the score is when it comes to how to deal with things they don't like (since anti-blasphemy laws are not acceptable; most people in the world do not want to live in places like Pakistan that already have these laws, which are evil and anyway routinely abused). If I had my druthers, it would be very simply explained, in some kind of law if necessary, that it is absolutely unacceptable to have any kind of different standards for Muslims than for anybody else, and if they don't like it, they can leave. I mean, really, is that a radical position? There is a reason, after all, why some Muslims in the West advocate Shari'a: Because it is inherently unequal with respect to these kinds of situations and provisions, eternally in favor of the Muslim and Islam over all others. Meanwhile, in the world where most of us live,
it's unacceptable to hit a person because of words that came out of their mouth. (Warning: foul language in the link, but I'm posting it because even though it is brought up in the context of teaching a new dad how to react/not react to insults suffered by his child, it absolutely fits here; If you cannot
not react with violence, there is no room to accommodate your view, you're plain wrong and stupid. The end.)
