Here’s the BBC headline: “Danish police shoot intruder at cartoonist’s home.” The intruder appears to a Muslim who wanted to kill the cartoonist, who is one of those who did one of the Danish Muhammad cartoons a few years ago.

As with any terror attack, like the idiot underwear bomber, this’ll just feed into a media frenzy that will mostly be a distraction from deeper problems. Not that this sort of thing has no effect: I’m sure the fear of offending violent loonies among Muslims has a real chilling effect on all sorts of possible criticisms of Islam. Still, all this helps only the right-wingers on either side of this so-called clash of civilizations. Muslim conservatives restrict our freedom of expression, and Western right-wingers use the “war on terror” as an excuse for their own pet restrictions on liberties.