Hmm. When people are rioting in the streets and burning down embassies because of cartoons, one has to say that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Bill Hicks once said that the problem with fundamentalism was that it breeds a ‘no irony’ mentality and I think we can see that here.
It appears that those who believe in Islam are offended because they consider it an act of blasphemy to draw Mohammed. That’s all very well for them because they believe in him - however it doesn’t apply to those of us who don’t believe does it? The catholics would consider me a heretic for views that I hold about the Pope - and they’re welcome to - I don’t care because I’m not a catholic, so they can take their doctrine and shove it. Well I’m sorry if this offends the Islamic but the same applies here. Believe what you like but don’t expect the rest of us to abide by it. The only thing that should dictate whether a cartoon is printed is whether or not it’s funny. From what I’ve heard with respect to these cartoons, many of them fail on those grounds. That would be a good reason not to publish them but not because they might offend. Frankly, the purpose of political and satirical art is to stir people up - it’s meant to illicit a response and it’s failing to do it’s job if it doesn’t. Ask Martin Rowson - he gets about 5000 e-mails a time when he takes the piss out of George Bush. I’m sure he views it as a sign that he’s doing his job. The problem with the response in the Islamic incident is that it’s out of all proportion with the events and I’m pretty sure that most sensible Muslims would agree with me on that.
I’m sorry to be the one to point it out but Islamic fundamentalists have been perpetrating suicide bombs. This doesn’t mean that those of us who possess reason think all Muslims agree with these actions of insanity and hatred. But it doesn’t mean you get to go all PC on us and bitch if we take the piss about it either. Discussing the fact that some Muslims commit atrocities is not racist or anti-religious - it's a vital step in working out why and stopping it.
Moreover, when the Muslim Council excuses itself weakly by saying it is upholding a "religious principle" by staying away from the Holocaust Memorial Day, it doesn't help matters on the religious tolerance front.
Muslims should, if anything, be joining the world in the call to make the actions of it's fundamentalist extremists not merely politically and socially unacceptable but to make those who would consider doing them feel foolish. Mockery is the only pin that terminally bursts the bubble of pompous, self-righteousness. Nobody likes to look and feel stupid - that’s why satire is such a powerful tool.
As a rational atheist, I look upon the reasonings of those with faith, with a bewilderment that would be amusing if it weren’t so bloody frightening.
See, the problem with faith is that it turns us all into children who are at the mercy and whims of a parent whom we wish to please. And our lack of subtlety in expressing that desire to be loved and accepted produces behaviour that at best is sycophantic and at worst downright frightening. Anybody who has observed an attention seeking child should be able to relate to this. If you ignore a child, odds are it will behave in a more and more reprehensible manner to try and illicit a response. The inevitable failure of God to respond to us (he can’t respond - he’s a manifestation of our own superego, nothing more) ensures that devotees become more and more desperate to get a response and the fundamentalism is what results. Obviously God isn’t showing himself because we’re not strict enough - better be more extreme. That’ll do it. But like that attention desperate child, no response from the parent could ever be enough once the pattern is set. Instead of a religiousd hatred bill, perhaps we should have fundamentalist asbos. I'd love to see Ian Paisley wearing a tag that went off everytime he said something vile. It might eventually train him, in a pavlovian manner, to stop being such a twat all the time.
You can see how it all goes wrong by watching any episode of the rugrats - it’s the absolutely perfect example in fact. The convoluted logic of the zealot is the logic of the babies who are at the mercy of a confusing world of adults, whose rules they don't quite grasp. They snatch a few titbits of information and extrapolate it to make sense of their world. And they're always wrong. Even better still, look at Angelica - a perfect metaphor for the bent cop, crooked politician or preacher, abusing midlevel authority for her own ends because she thinks it will win her points with the big folks and give her power of the stupid babies whom she despises because she thinks she is better than them. In both cases, the inability to see the true big picture and the fixation on small events which have no bearing on the real matter at hand are the stuff of every episode. They are also the stuff of religious outrage.
I mean, in a world as damaged and violent as ours, what would any reasonable deity be concerned about - the 50,000 people who die every day as a result of poverty or a cartoon that presented them in a slightly unflattering light? If the really think answer to that is the latter then you need to ask some serious questions about whether your God is worth worshipping. After all, should you follow authority blindly, irrispective of your own moral compass? Look to the example of Huckleberry Finn, who accepted that he might go to Hell because he had freed a slave but who freed him nonetheless because it felt like the right thing to do, irrespective of what God might say. That's courage.
So here's my plea to the Muslims of the world - do you know what would be worth taking to the streets over? The illegal war in Iraq that has resulted in the deaths of a 100, 000 of your brothers and sisters just because Americans can't get a handle on their consumerism. On the scale of things, these cartoons shouldn't even flicker the needle of your outrageometers.
See the problem with believing in an omnipotent god who will judge you, is the assumption that you have to behave in a certain way to please him, or else be punished. It’s like the boy scout who only does his good deed for the day if he has an audience. It creates the notion that it is the fact of being observed in doing good that matters, rather than the good deed itself. Whereas in truth, those of us who don't believe know, it’s what you do when you don’t believe anybody is watching that dictates what sort of person you really are.
Ask Chucky - I’m sure he’d agree.