In the wake of van Gogh's killing -- and threats against Hirsi Ali and the cartoonist -- one could easily make the safer decision to self-censor.

Death for doodling seems hardly worth it. But giving in to intimidation inevitably leads to greater demands for special accommodation down the road.

Which leads where?

Follow the yellow brick to Canterbury, where the archbishop recently made a case for redefining the relationship between religious conscience and law to allow people to opt out of laws that contradict their teachings.

Under that redefinition, sharia laws that permit gender inequality could be given a place within existing British code.

The archbishop has been word-bombed with criticism, deservedly, though he characterized the response as an overreaction.

No, an overreaction is a man who kills his wife -- or a brother kills his sister -- for dishonoring the family under sharia law. Overreaction is murdering a filmmaker for exploring the abuse of human rights that can be justified under strict interpretations of sharia law. Overreaction is plotting to assassinate a cartoonist for Allah's sake because you don't get it.

Underreaction to radical Islam and jihad gets Paris burned, artists killed, thousands incinerated by detonator airplanes, and archbishops advancing religious exemptions to enlightened law.

Europeans seem to understand this better than Americans in spite of 9/11, primarily because they have already underreacted -- or reacted too late. A recent Gallup poll for the World Economic Forum found that a majority of Europeans believed relations between the West and the Muslim world are worsening. This is owing in varying degrees to a lack of Muslim assimilation, a dying non-Muslim European population whose birth rate is being outpaced by Muslims three-to-one, and the sense that European culture is being usurped.

The brightest light in the Western world -- the one that flickers now in pockets of Europe -- is the freedom of expression that makes all other freedoms possible. Once that light is extinguished, then it may be too late, or too deadly, to react.