The Drawing that Launched a Thousand Stones (and lit some matches)

My first thought on hearing all the condemnation, stoning and arson over the Muhammad cartoons was "Damn! We need to have more Muslim critics out there." Think of how many bad movies could be avoided if people set fire to the theaters and stoned the producers! And TV - no more Xerox copies of other hits! Music...well, let me just say this: K-Fed would be hiding. It reminds me of the Doonesbury cartoons back when the Ayatollah issued a death call for Salman Rushdie. "For Joan Collins, death!" "Oh, a PAN, Peter! That's going to hurt!"

But seriously...

The mark of a true zealot lies in the humor. If someone can laugh at anything said about the other side, and can't laugh at anything said about their side, this is the kind of person that ruins Thanksgiving dinners and is saying "And one MORE thing..." two days later. The Muslims currently going nuts over these cartoon fit in perfectly with the humor acid test. Here's some examples of cartoons the Arab press has printed, with no condemnation I heard of. So...extreme examples against the Jews are hunky dory, and the mostly innocuous ones from the Danes aren't? And there are some points in the cartoons - the one with Muhammad in a bomb turban should make someone think, "Is that the image people have of us?" rather than "Is that AN IMAGE?"

I understand that one of the edicts - supposedly - in Islam is no images of Muhammad can be made, because that edges close to idolatry. I've heard similar arguments from some fundamentalists over here as well. I can understand that edict, and I have no problems with other people following this law. (Assuming it IS a law, since Islam seems to have more lawmakers than all the governments of the world combined, and many of them issue contradictory statements. See killing innocents and suicide bombings.) But their laws aren't mine nor the Danes. If it offends you, buddy, don't look at it and don't buy the paper and tell your buddies they shouldn't either. But torching embassies? Can we say overkill? Well, for some of the people out there we can't - they don't see any.

Anyone notice that there's no protests in the United States over the cartoons? Here, we're used to satire and humor over religion, for all the efforts of some lockbrains to deem what they hold sacred be enshrined in law. But over there, where the religion is sacrosanct and legally mandated, not so much. Some Dominionists may want to keep that in mind...