[yummyfajitas]

The point of the original article was not to defend the trolls but rather to point out the fact that civil society is becoming increasingly tolerant of violent threats when they are made by members of fundamentalist religious movements.

I don't think we are tolerant of fundamentalist religious movements; we certainly would not excuse Christians for threatening artists [1]. We are tolerant of bad behavior by non-westerners because we feel that criticizing them makes us racist.

[1] For an example of this, witness the reaction when Guiliani suggested defunding a museum over the "Piss Christ" exhibit.