Strange thing is, I am a lefty, (does supporting lib dem make you a lefty?) but I cannot condone the actions of these particular muslims, they are being overly bigotted and inciting racial hatred towards westerners. But they can get away with it because their country does not enforce laws of tolerance and understanding, and instead breeds ignorance and hatred (even if their religion does not).
Perhaps with the advent of one laptop per child, we will see education reach new heights, and tolerance towards others will be accepted, I never want to see anyone feel the need to "desecrate" anyone else's symbols of heritage, whether that heritage is religion or nationality or otherwise.
The strange thing is, I don't actually feel too violated by their actions, because I feel as though it was pointless and they have a right to believe what they believe. But it kind of reduces their own point when they get "uppity" about "stupid things" like illustrations of muhammed.
But all of this feels rather "old skool" - even the church felt very strongly when life of brian came out - so we can expect them to go through all of the same stages that we went through, although it is worrying for "them" (not all muslims, just a minority) to seem to turn to violence and destruction in response to such "cultural threats".
Have to remember though, we did have a certain amount of violence and destruction in our own pasts concerning desecration of christian idols etc. I expect you could still get yourself into a lot of trouble by going to remote parts of the U.S. and doing satanic ceremonies etc etc by the local militant "christian" groups.
So there doesn't seem to be so much difference between the crazies amongst the muslims and the crazies amongst the christians... except that we don't see many of our own crazy kind over here any more (am talking, coming from england, where things are a bit more subdued).