Truth In Jest
Muslims around the world are protesting caricatures drawn by Danish cartoonists of Islam's prophet Muhammed. The drawings have been called "blasphemous" and an "insult." One of them depicts Muhammed wearing a turban fashioned into a bomb.
The Associated Press describes Muslim reaction as follows:
The 12 caricatures have prompted boycotts of Danish goods, bomb threats and demonstrations in front of Danish embassies across the Islamic world. Muslims have also directed their anger at other European countries, with Palestinian gunmen briefly kidnapping a German citizen Thursday and surrounding European Union headquarters in Gaza.
...In Indonesia, 150 demonstrators hurled eggs at the building housing the Danish Embassy, then stormed in, pushing past security guards.
Shouting "God is Great," they tried to enter elevators to reach the mission on the building's 25th floor, but had to settle for tearing down a Danish flag and burning it on the pavement outside the building.
"We are not terrorists, we are not anarchists, but we are against those people who blaspheme Islam," a protester wearing white Arabic-style robes shouted outside the building.
Fundamentalist Muslims protested outside the Danish Embassy in Malaysia, chanting "Long live Islam, destroy our enemies" and accusing the Jyllands-Posten of seeking to incite hatred.
"It's an uncivilized act. It's heinous," said Hanifah Maidin, youth wing spokesman of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, demanding the Danish government apologize to the Muslim world.
About 800 people protested in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, chanting "Death to Denmark" and "Death to France." Another rally in the southern city of Karachi drew 1,200 people.
Pakistan's parliament unanimously voted to condemn the drawings as a "vicious, outrageous and provocative campaign" that has "hurt the faith and feelings of Muslims all over the world."
The irony is stunning: Muslims protesting images they validate by their own response.
How many times have Christians been the target of satire and contempt? How many blasphemous images have been drawn of Christ? Yet you never see Christians making bomb threats, kidnapping law-abiding citizens, or wielding guns and surrounding government facilities.
What's makes Christians and Muslims so different? Some might charge Christians with cowardice, saying they are not as zealous for their religion as Muslims. Maybe so, but I think it has more to do with the difference in the messages of these two religions. Muhammed called for violence and bloodshed, but Christ had a different message. One of His apostles, Peter, says the following to Christians who endure mistreatment at the hands of the public:
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do eivl and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor (1 Pet.
2:12-17).
Now a message like that would make Islam worthy of the title "religion of peace."
Neal Boortz summarizes the problem well here.
