Suppose for a moment that The New York Times had (falsely) reported that an Iranian prison official, trying to get information from some Americans arrested as spies, flushed a bible down a toilet.  The story wafted into American homes, and American Christians took to the streets in a wave of violent protests. From South Carolina to South Dakota, hundreds of people were injured and more than a dozen killed by fanatical Christians.

Would fingers be wagging all across the country because the sloppy reporting by the Times had caused death and destruction?  Or would folks be saying, “There go those Christian extremists again. These people are nuts.  What sane person would kill over such a thing?”

That didn’t happen, but almost exactly the same thing did, and it’s Newsweek Magazine, not the radical Muslims who rioted, that is catching the brunt of the criticism.  On May 9, Newsweek reported that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay by flushing a copy down a toilet.

The report triggered riots across the Muslim world from Afghanistan to Pakistan, Indonesia to Gaza. Rioters killed at least 16 people and injured more than 100 others.  The alleged action by the interrogators was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League. On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.

Newsweek Magazine was irresponsible and its editors have now apologized, but let’s face it. These rioters are nuts. They are extremist maniacal fanatics and it’s crazy to try to appease them.  The Arab League needs to stand down its protest against Newsweek and train its sights on the maniacs within its ranks. Until these people learn to address their grievances in a fashion a little more suited to the human species, they are not going to make any progress in an otherwise fairly civilized world.

There is a lesson to be learned by Newsweek, other media, and people in general, but it’s not the one that is blanketing the media today. The lesson is this. It takes very little to irritate a mad dog. That doesn’t mean that you go out of your way to be nice to it. It means that you avoid it if possible and be ready to kill it if necessary.

Newsweek is right to apologize for lousy reporting, but let’s not lose sight of the real problem here. Sloppy reporting is cause for concern and criticism. It is not cause for death and destruction.

The reason we are in a war with Muslim terrorists is because there is a faction in the Muslim world whose automatic reaction to any form of offense is murder and mayhem. They are the real problem. Newsweek is but a minor nuisance.