Weighing In on the Mohammad Cartoon

It began with an email exchange with Mixdorf in which I suggested that:

"On one hand, you have the incredibly sad irony people protesting the depiction of Mohammad as a terrorist by burning & killing. On the other hand, I wonder what the reaction of many Catholics would have be, were there to have been, amidst the Catholic Priest/child scandal a political cartoon of a slathering, sleazy-looking Pope chasing around little kids. Or Jesus doing the same."

He replied:

"There may have been, though perhaps with some level of decorum.

There's no excuse for burning and pillaging, and they're not really helping their cause by doing so, but on the other hand there's little editorial value to something as crude as the turban shaped-like-a-bomb cartoon."

To which I now add, at the risk of invoking the wrath of the Muslim and Western world:

The appropriateness of running the cartoon originally can be debated. The fact that certain media will not show it now is absolute BS, because is TOTALLY relevant to the story OF the controversy. One might even say it is a perfect example of the oft & too often remarked claim, "...then the terrorists have already won."

Lord knows I try to call U.S. culture & policy out when I disagree with it, but it does appear that currently, the consensus of “decorum” among the masses in the Muslim world really, really appears to be lagging behind the rest of the major world religions. I acknowledge that they feel that they are under constant attack (both figuratively and literally) by the West in a number of issues, but in instances like this, all the traditional and almost defensible reasons for taking up arms (economic destitution & loss of land, life, or liberty) are stripped away and what we're left with is people that just flip out far too easily. If suppose, were I were to come from a group of people that was systematically beaten down and oppressed over a series of generations, perhaps I would be so near a boiling point that nearly anything could send me over the top. I don't and can't know, and something like that may certainly be at work here.

But from an intellectual standpoint, I can't see how anyone that looks at the sort of culture of violence that seems to be encouraged and perpetuated amongst many voices that represent the Muslim faith could possibly come away with a hopeful view of their future. Of course, I can't see how anyone in this country that supports Republican policy can see it as a hopeful view of their future either, and people over here are a lot more at liberty to spend leisurely, comfortable hours thinking about such things.