If you’re going to publish blasphemous pictorials about Middle Eastern prophets, the least you can do is be funny, as in Jesus and Mo. The quality is up and down, but I liked this one. Actually, I do have two serious comments about the Danish-cartoons/Muslim-riots story. First of all, a lot of people in Arab dictatorships genuinely have no notion that a press can be independent, so getting mad at the whole country is a little less loony than it sounds. If a Syrian paper published something nasty (actually, I suspect they probably do), it would be entirely appropriate for reasonable people to get mad at the Syrian government. Second, I have advice for religious people who don’t want their prophets or deities or symbols blasphemed against: curb your crazies. Let’s run through some newsmakers in recent times who claimed to be faith-driven. On the Muslim side, there’s Mohamed Atta, President Ahmadinejad, and various other racist crazies; for the Christians, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and their legions of smarmy grasping ditto-heads; and for the Jews, Baruch Goldstein and Yesha’s “transfer” genocidaire-wannabes. The Christian batshit-loonies differ from the others in being apparently less murderous but vastly more hypocritical. To all the excellent Christians and Jews and Muslims out there: I know you exist. But you’re vanishing from view behind the cloud of mucky dust being raised by your lunatic fringe; as of right now, in the twenty-first century, when someone claims to be deeply religious, that’s grounds for suspicion of bigotry, greed, and a predisposition to homicide. Which is one reason my little boy isn’t being taken to church, for the moment.
