HERE is the latest global scenario: Sunni and Shia, conservatives and liberals, radicals and moderates have all been struck down by the same wound: stabbed in the heart by cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The divisions between them have narrowed and faded, and the differences that have lasted for centuries have vanishedat least in the face of this common enemy.

The enemys representation is a caricature with the face of t