A Commentary

I have to admit to not liking Islam. It's not that I don't like Muslims (the individuals), and it's not that I have an inherent dislike for their religious claims (although I believe them false). Rather it's that the greater cultural expression of Islam is evil.

That out in the open, here is some commentary on the ongoing debacle over cartoons.

This morning, I heard on NPR that the violent uproar had been orchestrated in part by some Muslim clerics in Denmark after the cartoons showed up in the newspaper late last year. They wrote a letter to the president asking for a meeting to vent. The President declined, probably because he doesn't see himself as the keeper of the media.

As a result of this 'slight', they embarked on a campaign to orchestrate the uprising by circulating the cartoons through the Arab world. In my opinion, they knew full well what the result would be. To top it all off, they included in the distributed cartoons some particularly incendiary ones that were never published.

That would only be an interesting footnote on the whole event if it weren't for the fact that this is common practice among the Muslim world. It's normal for Muslim clerics to speak to audiences of Muslims and lie. They make silly claims such as "Bush orchestrated the 9/11 attacks to justify a war on Islam!". Or they claim the Holocaust never happened, or any other lie they want to tell about the West, or about America. I've heard of them claiming that certain explosions (either bomb-making accidents, or suicide bomb attacks) were really Israeli or US missile attacks.

All this is part of a campaign to bolster support for Jihad against the West.

Then I see this:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the West’s publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over the victory of the militant Hamas group in the Palestinian elections last month. “The West condemns any denial of the Jewish holocaust, but it permits the insult of Islamic sanctities,” Khamenei said.

On that same NPR bit this morning I was struck with the irony of the fact that one of the cartoons was described as a depiction of Muhammed with a bomb wrapped in his turban. Presummably, they are offended that Muhammed is being equated with terrorism. To express their anger against this unjustified characterisation of Islam, they proceeded to kill, bomb and burn Danish citizens and buildings....Hmmm.

A religion of peace? Clearly not.