“As long as there’s blood in us, we will not remain silent over insults against our prophet,” said Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group, in a rare public appearance. Respect? Really? You’ll kill me because I don’t respect you? Over insults? Well, why don’t you try doing something worthy of respect, like condemning murder, protecting women instead of victimizing them, seeking peace with your neighbors?

What psychological or chemical process occurs in your nervous system that overrides human decency? Why do you find it impossible to tolerate — to the point of killing another human being — the idea that someone else thinks you are ridiculous? Why do mere words matter so much?

It’s an interesting question to consider in a largely Mormon community. Mormons are no strangers to insults, but they don’t go around killing people over them. Nowadays they shrug off the sarcasms of South Park (mormondig.notlong.com), Broadway’s “The Book of Mormon” and similar slides of the knife. Can the Muslim world ever get there, or is it going to wander forever in an intellectual wasteland?

For Muslims to demand the world’s respect through violence is to confirm all the worst concepts about Islam — that it will not be satisfied until it dominates the planet; that it is not a religion of peace; that it is a danger to civilization. Islam needs to learn that words and ideas are not the same thing as guns and bombs. They can be fought with the same weapons — words and ideas — not bloodshed. Why does that continue to be such a difficult lesson?