That reminds me, I need to let everyone know to buy the toilet paper with the pictures of Mohammad on it! It is great when you have the runs or blowing your nose!!!

So to all you Muslims "Bring it on bitches!! This atheist will kick your butt!!" Your fake God cann't do anything to me!!!

How on Earth would anyone know that's supposed to be Mohammed? All those whack-jobs look alike.

You've heard of the Anti-Defamation League, right Dan? Or the Catholic League?

It's cute that you're comparing Muslims to Scientologists -- especially when I'm pretty sure you know better -- but your readers should know that religious anti-defamation organizations are common to all mainstream religions.

@3 - somehow I get the feeling the ADL wouldn't go after someone for a stupid editorial cartoon.

No, the ADL has a different MO, but it can be every bit as petty and creepy as some of the shit the CoS have been accused of. And if someone published a cartoon about the Holocaust or Israel -- yeah, I think the ADL might have something to say about that.

Is there a correlation between how vehemently a religious organization protests dissenting viewpoints, and how absurd their beliefs are? We’d have to assign an absurdity rating for different religions to work this out. How often a religion contradicts itself should be factored with how outrageous it’s claims. If there is a correlation, Scientology and Islam would rank highest in level of absurdity and contradiction. Muslims call their religion, who’ holy texts advocate beheading, brutalizing, forcibly converting, and/or enslaving everyone that isn’t Muslim, a religion of peace. That earns them pretty high marks. Scientology has Xinu (Zenu?), Thetans, ancient interstellar warlords; also earns them high marks.

I’ll have to ponder this one.

Oh shit, you posted "the picture" on Slog. Al Qaeda is gonna blow up the internet!

No, they're not going to blow up the internet. They might, however, blow up The Stranger's offices, although, from some of the stories I've heard, that might qualify as urban improvement.

Then we'll just have to get the Stranger offices declared a historical landmark.

Wow, just like reading an Instapundit post 3 years ago. Man, this Slog is some cutting edge shit. Hey, on Monday could we get a post on the nasty headcutting shit these fuckers do to kidnapped American construction workers?

"The Picture" looks more and more like that thing on Mars, right?

@9, I laughed audibly at that.

Not to remotely defend the people you're talking about in this article, but that cartoon *is* racist, and it reflects on you that you're using any excuse to post it.

I still think he looks like Mr. French from the TV show "Family Affair."

Religion is self destructing. They are all sad and increasingly irrelevant. The more people that awaken to their real pupose, the accumulation of wealth and power of men, the more understanding people will have for one another. Sue away.

So if I was to call Mohammed the bastard child of a goat and a camel, would that be considered blasphemy?

@ #16--the goat would sue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigotry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia

@13: And how is the negative depiction of Mohammed racist?

@18,19: Calling something bigotry doesn't make it so. The Qur'an repeatedly enjoins all believers to fight the infidel. Just to pick a random example: Surah 4, Ayah 76: Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelievem fight in the Cause of Idolatry. So fight you against the friends of Satan; Ever feeble indeed is the plot of Satan.

@2: "How on Earth would anyone know that's supposed to be Mohammed? All those whack-jobs look alike."

Wow, that's pretty much a racist point of view. As if somehow your level of religious tolerance or extremism equals what you look like, or did you mean something else?

Stirring up shit, Dan? Certainly you know those examples of Islam you used are extreme. What good does it do to further the cause of radical Islam by publishing the cartoon. Aren't you just proving their point?

#6
Pretty much EVERY religion has spacy ideas and has radicals that vehemently and violently oppose all other religions. Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, etc., they all believe all sorts of wacky shit... people rising from the dead, animal gods roaming all over, burning bushes that talk to people, invisible avengers looming over us from the heavens. There's no end to the craziness really.

@20 I don't know anything about Islam.

Here's the real problem: Barack Obama may be rejected as the next President of the United States because of anti-muslim bigotry. and he's not even a muslim. In other words, anti-muslim bigotry is a real political problem.

The Slog could be talking about that, rather than this weirdly bigoted crusades stuff that lumps all of "Islam" into one headline.

Wow... ya know, after seeing that cartoon about a bijillian times now I have to say, for me at least, it's finally gone from:

"Oooooh! Heh... okay, that is kinda funny."

to:

"Eeeeew! Ahh... o-kay, well maybe that is really bigoted..."

I mean, not to be PC or anything, but really...

How is this, not like this?

I mean, not to be PC or anything, but really...

How is this, not like this?

Him. HE'S guilty. Am I not correct?

http://home1.gte.net/poofalow/faces.jpg

@26&27: Um, the Nip doesn't have a turban with a bomb in it? Duh.

And @13, the cartoon is only racist if you consider a religion a "race," which I don't. But yeah, Dan will use any excuse to post it. BTW, no-one visits Stonehenge and asks what happened to the English because we know the answer: the fucking Saxons slaughtered all of them.

An excerpt from a piece in today's NY Times by John Burns a war correspondent in Iraq for five years -unlike Savage who wrote a flippant pro-war piece and then went back to his life of brave Republican warrior.

"They are scenes that do not fade: Watching American soldiers being slipped into body bags for the journey home, and knowing, at that instant, that the lives of unknowing families thousands of miles away have been shattered; surveying the aftermath of suicide bombings, with severed limbs in the street, and hearing the wailing of the Iraqi bereaved. Or, an experience we endured twice at The New York Times, having a young Iraqi man working on our news staff gunned down by militiamen and insurgents, leaving children, some barely old enough to be in school, to cope with life without a beloved father and a brother, and to have no sense of why."

Before sept 11, none of you guys knew about Islam or even Muslims. I doubt you could even pronounce Muhammed and now we are all killers lool!

Wow check out all these ignorant people. Well guess what guys. Declare war an Islam and I will be fighting against you. Until then happy blogging.

@30: I think you mean what happened to the _British_, since the term English derives from Angle - denoting one of the germanic tribes that invaded britain.

Rascist, schmascist.

All I know is that picture makes one hell of a good screen saver! Woot!

Dan's list of ills in the world was a little weird (peak oil? - isn't that really the fault of the US?; global warming - US again!), but his point was that instead of addressing really important issues, one of the main issues at a summit of Muslim countries was defamation of Islam. In his view, the other issues are more important than stupid cartoons (that weren't even really that funny).

Here's a quote from the article he linked to:
"Concerned about what they see as a rise in the defamation of Islam, leaders of the world's Muslim nations are considering taking legal action against those that slight their religion or its sacred symbols. It was a KEY ISSUE during a two-day summit that ended Friday in this western Africa capital." (emphasis added)

The point is that Muslim leaders are not saying: "Hey, suicide bombers are making millions of basically peaceful people look bad by invoking their religion to justify their heinous acts - what can we do about that?" They are saying: "Let's sue the cartoonists for pointing out that suicide bombers cloak themselves in religious rhetoric to justify their acts." Which is a stupid way to get people to respect your religion.

Basically, Muslims are trying to solve their PR problem by suing people rather disassociating themselves with extremists or by trying to eliminate heinous practices with regard to women.

At least that's how I read his post.

Ivan

My admiration and respect to what I thought was a total leftist publication!

Left and Right aside, way to have some cajones!!

The PI and Times are pathetic.

Alright Dan Savage!!!!!!

Being gay doesn't mean you have to be a sissy!

I don't think anybody before or since has summed up the whole situation better than Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s column, which deserves quoting in its entirety:

Did you hear the one about Peeping Jesus?

2006, The Miami Herald

I think I saw Jesus the other day.

It was only for a second and the TV was on mute. But I'd swear I saw a commercial for a raunchy cable cartoon show that depicted the Son of God as a Peeping Tom at somebody's window.

I immediately went out and burned down a Starbucks.

OK, not really. I am used to living in a pluralistic society where reverence is a rare and dwindling commodity. Had I chosen to make any protest, it would have taken the form of a nasty e-mail. Instead, I shook my head and returned to my exercise bike.

What a difference an ocean makes. Southeast Asia and the Middle East, of course, have suffered days of rioting in the past several days by Muslims outraged over cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. The drawings were originally published in a Danish newspaper last year, and were republished recently in Europe. Many Muslims consider it blasphemy to depict Muhammad period, much less with a bomb in his turban, as one of the cartoons does. This is apparently meant as political satire, a way of pointing out the tension between two contradictory facts:

1) Islam is a religion of peace;

2) An inordinate amount of the burning and destroying in this world seems to be done in the name of Islam.

So naturally as protest, some Muslims choose to ... um ... burn and destroy. Lord, save us all from the irony impaired.

There is, yes, a freedom-of-expression case to be made here. Also a word to be said for the need of tolerance in pluralistic societies. But I doubt if those most in need of hearing that case would be capable of understanding it. The irony impaired are seldom reachable by reason.

The argument is not about religion, but culture. Note that American Muslims — surely as offended by the cartoons as Muslims elsewhere — have felt no need to riot. They are writing letters to editors and holding peaceful rallies while their co-religionists are burning embassies down.

No, the argument is about what happens when any culture anywhere is so bereft and so closed that its people have no way of comprehending or even imagining lives and beliefs beyond their own.

Consider the announcement by an Iranian newspaper of a retaliatory contest seeking cartoons that mock the Holocaust. This, as a means of highlighting the West's supposed hypocrisy, its double standard on the question of free expression. A Muslim Web site has already posted a cartoon showing Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler.

All of which is so appallingly stupid, misreads the rest of the world so completely, you don't know where to begin pulling it apart.

Perhaps it is enough to ask: Do they really expect this crude attempt at provocation to make Jews riot in the streets of Tel Aviv or Palm Beach?

Dear God, I think they do. That's the pitiful thing. Both for the aforementioned stupidity and for what it says about radical Islam's isolation, its separation, its "apartness" from the entire rest of the world, mainstream Islam emphatically included.

I'm dismayed that a few publishers felt it necessary to give gratuitous offense to 1.1 billion people. Just because you have the right to say a thing doesn't always mean you should.

Still, what's more dismaying is the way some in the Muslim world have chosen to respond. At least 10 people have lost their lives in these riots. All over a series of cartoons.

And you wonder: Are they so far removed from the realities of the world the rest of us occupy that they don't see the damage they're doing their faith, their people, themselves?

But then, true believers are seldom afflicted by doubt.

I think I saw Jesus peeking through a window the other day. It offended me. But the alternative is a world in which no such depiction could ever appear because laws and mobs would not allow it.

That offends me more.