Terry Jones and moral responsibility for murder

Via Terry Glavin, a very interesting analysis of the murders in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, discussing the manipulation of religious sentiment both among Muslims and Christians, as well as the tangled and very sad situation in Afghanistan is one source of Afghans' anger - The Dead of Mazar.

It sounds like chaos theory: a fringe extremist religious leader in the Florida boondocks holds a trial of the Quran for its role in inspiring the 9/11, condemns it to death and has someone else execute it by burning – and on the other side of the world, angry Muslims, possibly incited by sermons of hatred, storm a ‘foreigners’ compound and (in the words of the UN spokesman on BBC TV last night) ‘hunt down’ and kill seven of them....

And – since Pastor Jones’ provocation if not deemed to directly inciting violence seems to be protected by the First Amendment(**), we still hope that, despite his public denials, his dreams will be visited by the pictures of the slain of Mazar and, after today, Kandahar.

These are the first and last paragraphs - it's well worth reading the whole article.