The riots and death threats that evolved last year from publication of a series of Dutch cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad were precisely the result of such literal-mindedness. True believers saw blasphemy in those images and, based on a literal interpretation of received dogma, set loose the dogs of Allah.
In fact, there is no injunction in the Koran against images of Muhammad. The alleged prohibition is merely a popular consensus handed down from early Muslim theologians who embraced the Jewish prohibition against graven images.
History is a riot of ironies, but it would be nice if American politicians would resist compounding the hilarity.
What distinguishes Western culture from the fanaticism of the Muslim world -- at least on our good days -- is our evolution away from such literal-mindedness. We may still have literal-minded contingents among certain religious strains, but at least we're free to identify them as such.
Otherwise, we no longer banish infidels, burn witches or mount inquisitions against nonbelievers.
That said, civilization is a fragile affair. It is not so difficult to move populations from the sublime to the hideous when emotions can be exploited with scripture -- or fiction -- to justify our worst impulses.
The literal mind led to the fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie, as well as to the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. The literal mind envisioned and executed 9/11.
We can confidently assume that Allen had no sinister intentions when he urged constituents to treat Webb's fiction as a literal indictment of his character. He was just playing good ol' boy politics, after all.
But the impulse that invites such a witless interpretation of fiction comes from the same dark ignorance that fuels the self-ratifying fanaticism of radical Islam.