How about this?
For every one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons that have inflamed Muslim sensibilities, I can show you three dozen like the one above. Many come out of Egypt, but they originate all over the Arab world. In appease-at-all-costs Canada, it's very rare that we get a glimpse of the kind of hatred endemic in Muslim culture: hatred of Jews, in particular and the Americans, who are seen as Jewish protectors, in general.
You have to understand that in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, it is general knowledge that Jewish people are monsters who flavour their Seder meal with the blood of Arab babies; that the Jews run the world; that the only good Jew is a dead Jew. Kids are given this nonsense with their mothers' milk.
By publishing the first cartoon on my blog, I am taking a risk. By stating that to some degree I agree with the sentiment behind that first cartoon, I am doubtless increasing it. The Danish Embassy in Syria has been torched, there have been worldwide protests, some of them violent, and death threats have been levelled against the original publishers of the cartoons. This is typical:
Pleasant, isn't it?
The real irony is that the Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet with a bomb for a turban is merely stating in pictorial form what many here in the West have come to believe about Islam: that its sole purpose is to eradicate all other systems of belief off the face of the globe. And the reaction to the publishing of these cartoons is proving their point in spades.
The second cartoon, out of Egypt, depicts what many of that culture believe about Israel and the United States. As far as people in that part of the world are concerned, there's nothing offensive about it. Odd that Jews everywhere aren't burning embassies down. To me, that says something about the maturity of the Jewish faith.
I understand the Muslim religion bans representation of human figures (in an attempt to eliminate what it sees as a sin of idolatry). It also bans denigrating words directed at its Prophet. That seems like idolatry to me!
I am nobody's Muslim scholar, but I'm pretty sure the Koran makes allowances for people living in non-Muslim lands. Last I looked, Denmark was pretty Christian. As usual, the fundamentalists can't tell their faces from their fundaments.
This whole brouhaha is precisely why I have no use for religion. That may sound harsh, especially since I'm perfectly aware the vast majority of believers in any faith are nowhere near as zealous as the folks who decided to torch that embassy. But the roots of that act are embedded in the very fibres of any religion which states that (a) God is greater than Man; (b) there is something Man has to do to get into God's good graces; and (c) if Man does not do what God requires of him, he will burn in hell everlasting.
That many Christians profess to believe in those three things, while simultaneously telling you that their God is eternally loving, speaks to their misunderstanding of love.
The God I believe in--and I do believe in one--is a part of all things, not apart from all things. He is truly eternally loving, which means She never judges, merely Observes. It asks nothing of us--there being nothing to ask. This God forgives us nothing--for there is nothing to forgive: how can one possibly sin against a Being/Force that inhabits every cell of the universe?
Most importantly, the God I believe in honestly doesn't care whether or not I believe in God.
I would never presume to criticize any one person's faith, but I do feel free to observe the results of that faith. And what my observations tell me is that many, many people have never examined their faith, much less have faith in themselves. The first order result of this is a world turned upside down, where heinous acts are committed in the name of a supposedly benevolent deity.
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