calmIt arose from this speech. Read the whole thing.
The Muslims have reacted as you would expect silly people to. Not that the choice they occasionally offer is any better. Death, conversion to Islam, or payment of a tax demonstrates the incoherent reasoning at the heart of Muslim understanding of their own society.
The only possible response to such a choice by me would be the following:
You offer me a choice. Death is familiar to me, and not something that bothers me. If you would prefer that I choose it, here's your chance. If you mean by the chance to convert to Islam the choice to submit to God, I have already done so. To the extent that you mean will I repudiate my prior beliefs, the answer is no. Payment of a tax as a response means that you are not concerned with God, but your purely local and quite fallible ruler, and I decline absolutely to submit myself to him, or her. I submit my life to the providence of God, where it has always been. If it be His will that I die, I die. If not, not. There is nothing special about that. Do what you wish.
