THE ANSWER TO THE EXAMINER’S QUESTION IS SIMPLE: It’s because people are afraid they’ll blow things up.
Sooner or later, you know, fundamentalist Christians are going to pick up on this lesson, engage in similar behavior, and make similar demands. Because, apparently, it works fine.
UPDATE: Bryan Preston says that I’m wrong, and that Christians won’t do such things. I tend to think that conduct that’s rewarded gets engaged in more. We’ll find out which one of us is right, soon enough.
My own experience, however, is that Christians can lose it, too. Death threats aren’t the same as murder, of course. But I was appalled at the behavior I experienced, which included nasty threats, wishes that my wife would suffer Terri Schiavo’s fate, and nasty phone calls to my home as my wife recovered from heart surgery. That behavior, from religious pro-lifers, seemed kind of un-Christian to me. So pardon me if my faith that things can never get worse is weaker than Bryan’s.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Well, Allah gets it right in this comment to Bryan’s post:
Glenn’s simply saying that if we humor one religion’s fanatics, other religions’ fanatics will act in the expectation of being humored too. He’s not saying anything about numbers. On the contrary, it’s you guys who seem to be suggesting that no Christian fundamentalist would ever resort to violence. History is not on your side.
This is not a hard one, folks. But Bryan makes it hard by arguing against “This idea of Glenn’s, which goes back several years, that Christians are just chomping at the bit to go jihadi but don’t for some odd reason.” Er, that’s not my idea. My idea is, as suggested above, that you get more of what you reward.
MORE: Some further thoughts.
STILL MORE: More thoughts here.