Let me ask you a hypothetical. You go to the "wrong side of the tracks", and start insulting everyone you meet. How long do you think you get away with that before someone shoves your teeth down your throat?
Sure, it's totally disproportionate for someone to break your face because you called his mother a prostitute, and it puts them squarely in the wrong, but guess what? Some people will do that anyway and you know it. I'm guessing you don't say stuff like that to people you think might do so. That's partly because you're (as far as I can tell) not a c*nt and you wouldn't do it to pretty much anyone, but also because you have an understanding of cause and effect and a sense of self-preservation. I'm sure you could sit in your hospital bed with your jaw wired congratulating yourself on your moral superiority... but you'd rather avoid the whole, painful experience.
So you will understand this concept as it applies to yourself.
None of this applies to the scenario though.
If the man who burnt the Quran went about harassing Muslims in Denmark, then yes, he'd be a jackass. That isn't what he did. He burnt the Quran as an act of protest. A Christian Iraqi protesting against Islam...I mean, it's not as if there's anything in the ME that might warrant such a protest, right?
Then to go back to agitators, there's an element of cowardice that in this situation the agitators are often not going to suffer the consequences - they are going to spill out on a whole load of people who have done nothing but will see their property trashed, be assaulted, even killed. It is within the scope of government to say "If that shit causes too much trouble, we're banning it." And they do. This is how the world works.
1: By that standard, anyone who protests against anything is a coward unless they have boots on the ground, so to speak. So for instance, back to my Russian embassy example, protesting in front of the embassy isn't particuarly brave, and certainly nowhere near as brave as those fighting in Ukraine, but it isn't all or nothing. The 'braver' thing for the man to do might be to head back to Iraq to protest directly in the region, but that's straying dangerously near to "go back to where you came from" arguments.
2: The "shit causing too much trouble," as you put it, occurred in Iraq, not Denmark. The actual crimes occurred in Iraq, not Sweden. The perpetrators were in Iraq, not Scandinavia.
I mean, actually consider the implications of this. Awhile back, when China exerted control over Hong Kong, there were fistfights in universities between Chinese and HK students. Is it really "too much trouble" to prevent the HK students from protesting against China, because of how Chinese students react? Arguably, yes, from a purely utilitarian perspective. But consider the implications for a moment - the idea that if a bully (China/Islamists) make too much of a fuss, you just back down. Standing up to bullies takes courage, sometimes you even lose (I would know), but often, it's worth it.
So we can let the far right burn antagonise sectors of the community, but I really don't think it's a nuanced, adult and intelligent approach to just bellow "BUT MUH FREEDOMS" when the government opines that it doesn't like the far right doing so. It might be a statement of values, but it's also a painfully naive and unrealistic attitude to how the world works.
Again, the man who burnt the Quran was Iraqi. The far right would, under most circumstances, want nothing to do with him.
And yes, some statements of values are worth it. If one set of values includes free speech, and another set of values includes blasphemy laws (take Pakistan for example, which was among those who voted in favour of the bill), those values are on a colission course. Sometimes, you have to take a stand. And I know that's easy for me to say, since I'm not the one doing the proverbial standing, but given what I've read here, it's clear that many don't agree.
The issue is far less complex than you give it credit, and by no means whatsoever is it a "their side of the world" problem. Nobody's giving two shits about what Muslims in Indonesia, Nigeria, or Sierra Leone think, just the ones where the oil and rare-earth minerals are. Just like nobody's giving two shits about the continued existence of the LRA, for example.
People give plenty of shits in those areas, what are you talking about? There's plenty of interest in Oz about Islamism in Indonesia (we experienced the Bali Bombings after all), Nigeria is currently experiencing an Islamist insurgency that's raging across the Sahel (heck, France has troops there, though Wager's moving in), and the LRA? What about them? You can't compare the LRA to groups like Al Queeda, the scale is nowhere near equivalent.
Islamism is a global movement. There's no Christian terrorist equivalent.