Ragemember

Nigel Powers: ... There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.

Christopher Hitchens: It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways. How about reminding the Islamists that, by their mad policy in Kashmir and elsewhere, they have made deadly enemies of a billion Indian Hindus? Is there no danger that the massacre of Iraqi and Lebanese Christians, or the threatened murder of all Jews, will cause an equal and opposite response? Most important of all, what will be said and done by those of us who take no side in filthy religious wars? The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant, or neutral, without inviting their own suicide. And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy.

On the more serious side, it's strange for Hitchens to pick out as examples of Islamic provocation Kashmir -- which for better or worse, began as a nationalist struggle -- and the perilous position of Iraqi Christians. After all, the latter did fairly well under Saddam.