My point, Omar, is that the people marked for death by one side are often people like Salman Rushdie, whose only crimes are crimes of writing; the people marked for death by the other are people like Osama Bin Laden, who murder thousands of innocent people. There is a qualitative difference there.

Benedict Arnold was a traitor in a very practical sense of giving away a military fort to an enemy. Salman Rushdie wrote a novel. There is a qualitative difference there too.

THIS, to my mind, is why the two sides are not psychologically equivalent. Certain values, like freedom of expression, are more important to some parties than to others.