My Message to Radical Islam

Not backing down.

Letting Mohammed Out of the Closet - Hate and Intolerance from the AP

Dean has a great wrap up of the brouhaha over the maker of the "Innocence of Muslims." I wanted to look at their reporting from a different angle. The AP asserts as fact that the film denigrates Islam. They base this on the report that the film depicts Mohammed as a homosexual and a pedophile. One question. Is the AP rendering judgement that accusations of such predilections are denigrating? What happened to gay pride? Why aren't they celebrating Mohammed being let out of his closet? Why aren't we celebrating the diversity of Islamic culture, because we have learned that its founder was gay? I think the AP needs to rethink their assertions. They are flat out hateful and intolerant.

Meanwhile I saw a post from The American Muslim web site that I sort of agreed with until I thought through the moral equivalence being advanced. Judge for yourself.

Based on what was initially reported, it seemed that a group of extremist Jews produced and distributed a hateful film insulting Islam, Muslims, and the Prophet Muhammad to further their pro-Zionist agenda. This was FALSE, it was extremist Christians Muslim religious extremists drew attention to the film to further their own agenda. Extremist Christians promoted the film and held a “trial of Prophet Muhammad” event to gain publicity for themselves. Egyptian political extremists used the film to stir up the masses to promote their political agenda. The extremist political organization Al Qaeda used the film as further proof of their propaganda effort to say that the U.S. is at war with all Muslims to gain support for their cause. And, all of these extremists succeeded in provoking ignorant or extremist Muslims into carrying out acts of terrorism (hirabah). Update: Al Qaeda, or one of their affiliates actually seems to have been the perpetrator of the attack on the Libyan Embassy

The only figure that I know of in the Torah, the New Testament, or the Qur’an, who would be honored by the actions of any of these extremists is Satan.

These religious and political extremists use religion as a cover to attempt to justify actions that can only be called evil. They want to provoke a reaction, as it feeds into their narratives, or they believe they can use the suffering of others to aid their own political cause. All of the extremists have more in common with each other than they do with the majority of decent people of their faith.

There is some truth to what Sheila Musaji is saying, except for this. How can one draw a moral equivalence between offending someone's religion and suffocating and murdering an innocent person and dragging his body through the streets?

I Can't Draw

So I uploaded some images instead.

All of these images have a few things in common. They were rendered by artists who had a respect for and belief in the religious figures shown. They are products of the time and culture which produced them. They bear no resemblance whatsoever to any known historically accurate representation of the individual pictured.

Those in the Muslim world who threaten violence over depictions of Mohammed are loony for threatening the violence in the first place. But more fundamentally, they are wrong to be offended at all, because no one can say what Mohammed looked like in the first place. One could make a stick figure and call it Mohammed, but so what? What is the point in any outrage. Further, the picture of Mohammed provided for this article, I will leave it to you to decide, was painted by a devout adherent to that religion, centuries ago. Muslims are sadly misreading their own traditions to take offense at all.

On a personal note, I believe firmly in freedom of speech, so I defend the right of cartoonists and South Park to portray religious figures any way they want. However, I feel that I should personnally respect people's religious beliefs, because, only in that way, can I fulfill the great commission that I believe I have been given.