Q: When we hear demonstrators make comments about the president apologizing and this is an insult to Muslims the world over - what aren't they understanding about the U.S. and what isn't the U.S. understanding about them? Many in the U.S. think it's absurd that a terrible, small movie that no one had seen has caused such violence.
ZAKARIA: Well, I think it's fair to say that there is a kind of extremism and a lack of kind of an understanding of freedom of speech and opinion.
The person who made this movie is crude, is bigoted and is a buffoon, but in the United States of America, we do not shut down or jail people who are crude and vulgar and bigoted.
They have to do something that harms people physically. People's freedom of speech, even to say offensive things, is protected. They don't get that to a certain extent, particularly relating to religious issues.
Remember Salman Rushdie, the novelist? He went through this whole period of a fatwa and things like that, precisely because people could not understand that he was exercising his freedom of speech to write a book that was regarded by many Muslims as offensive.
What we don't understand about them, I think, is that this does affect a kind of core sense of their dignity and it affects their sense of whether or not we respect them.
But I think at the end of the day, the West is in the right here. The United States is in the right. It is entirely inappropriate under any circumstances to use violence as a response to freedom of speech.
The way you counter bad speech is with good speech. Let them make a great movie about Prophet Mohammed. That's the way you do it, not by killing people, not by burning people.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.