Like the Danes before them, the Swedes are coming to understand just how opposed to freedom fanatical Islamists are.

Swedish artist Lars Vilks was invited by an art school to participate in an exhibit with the theme, of all things, of dogs. Vilks, something of a provocateur (his website has a cartoon of a Jew’s head on a pig’s body), submitted cartoons including one with Mohammed’s head on a dog’s body (it’s connected to the contemporary Swedish craze for “roundabout dogs,” but that’s another story). Before the exhibit opened, his drawings were removed by the organizers, citing possible security threats. Another gallery followed suit, claiming similar worries.

This provoked much discussion in the Swedish media. Although several other newspapers had already published the cartoons, it was only when Nerikes Allehanda, a regional paper in Orebro, published one of them on August 18 that the fur began to fly. Like the Jyllands-Posten cartoons of Mohammed published in September 2005, the cartoon was used to accompany and illustrate an article discussing self-censorship, threats, and freedom of religion.

It looks like things have already reached the point where thuggish violence is rewarded by preempted censorship. Unfortunately, the perpetual outrage mongers seem to have vastly increased their efficiency:

Sweden’s own Muslims have merely demonstrated peacefully outside the paper?s office, but, like the Jyllands-Posten affair, foreign intervention has now raised the stakes. With the Danish cartoons it took four months before several Muslim governments, at the behest of an Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in Mecca, launched protests, boycotts, and threats, resulting in dozens of murders, especially of Christians. This time they took only nine days.

The Swedish response? Dhimmitude, of course:

A Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman said the government had “expressed regret that the publication of the cartoons had hurt the feelings of Muslims”.

“We can’t apologise for the cartoons because we did not publish them,” spokeswoman Sofia Karlberg told the BBC News website.

The only reason they can’t apologize is because they aren’t the perpetrators, not because they believe in principles of freedom. It’s no wonder Islamists believe the West is weak, we can’t even defend our own principles.