A Defensive Caricature...

Over the past week the Muslim world has rioted and protested against the forces of blasphemy and free speech. The Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, the violent offshoot of Palestine's Fatah Party, stormed the European Union's offices in Gaza. Syria recalled its ambassadors from Denmark. The Danish embassy in Damascus has been barraged with bomb threats. Muslims all over the Arabian peninsula have boycotted or destroyed foreign products from Norway, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Gunmen in the west bank have threatened all westerners with kidnappings. The newspaper's that published the cartoon have had their websites compromised by Denial of Service Attacks. Commerce has ground to a halt in these areas as angers rose to heavenly heights. All of this over a silly cartoon.

The cartoon, originally published in the Danish Jyllands-Posten last September contains several satirical depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. The cartoonists commissioned by the paper to draw the various images have gone into hiding for fear of assassination attempts from Islamic extremists. Being a former newspaper cartoonist, I feel compelled to help qualm this situation before a western aid worker gets decapitated or a starving artist gets stabbed to death while riding a bicycle through Amsterdam.

Why are Muslims so upset? Sure the teachings of Islam prohibit the depiction of both Muhammad and Allah, but I question whether these cartoons depict either of those two divine entities.* Typically, the news reports mention the depiction of Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a lit fuse. After careful analysis of the drawing I have determined that the man depicted in that image is that of Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The supposed depiction of Muhammad with his eyes blacked out wielding a saber in front of conservatively covered Muslim women, is that of Osama Bin Laden (note the signature gray streak in the beard). The depiction standing on a cloud in heaven informing the incoming suicide bombers that heaven had run out of virgins is a drawing of Iranian Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. None of these drawings can be said to be the image of Muhammad.

The millions of screaming, rock throwing, flag burning Muslims should be upset that the artists failed to draw original depictions of the Prophet and instead surfed the internet for the stereotypical religious minded Muslims and copied the likeness. But even the lack of creativity on the part of the artists doesn't excuse the Muslim community from being labeled as extremely melodramatic and exaggerating the insult.

They should take a lesson from the Christian Community. In the later nineties the western world experienced the peak of blasphemy shrouded in art. Andres Serrano took a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine, calling it Piss Christ, and it toured the world, drawing crowds of angry museum goers. Chris Ofili painted an uninspired depiction of the Virgin Mary, but increased the painting's appeal to art museums by flinging elephant feces at his finished piece, and called it The Holy Virgin Mary. Recently, a statue of the ten commandments drew the rage of secularists when it found a home outside an Alabama courthouse.

The people disgusted by these works of art didn't run off and threaten the lives of poets and artists in Greenwich Village, ransack liquor stores throughout Brooklyn, nor did they kidnap any lawyers, judges, bailiffs or juvenile delinquent. They simply tolerated the insult and politely threw white paint or performed jump kicks into the art pieces. Why can't Muslims practice a similar degree of self control?

Ignoring the collective evidence supporting the view that Islam as a whole is histrionic (consult your DSM-IV), the eccentricities of Muslims is due to their fervent fanaticism regarding their faith. All religions under the umbrella of the god of Abraham demand that false idols be prohibited, but we never saw Charlton Heston, Maia Morgenstern, Willem Dafoe, Jim Caviezel or Glenn Carter attacked. Why? Because Moses, Mary and Jesus (tempted, impassioned or superstar) are not true deities.**

Many Muslims routinely substitute false idols for manipulative clerics. The Koran (Qur'an) states that a sacrifice of life for the cause of Allah rewards the victim with 40 virgins in an afterlife in paradise. But those that perform suicide attacks are doing so under the guidance of agenda driven clerics, that subjectively interpret the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Since Islam proclaims that Muhammad was the last prophet, no other person afterwards could truly know the will of Allah. Therefore all current clerics that call for Holy Jihad are only speculating that Allah wants Muslims to kill the infidels.

The clerics would argue that the scripture of the Koran demands the death of Israel, America or some poor artist living in a moldy basement apartment outside of Copenhagen. But the scripture wasn't even written by Muhammad and Allah never personally told him anything. So we're depending on a successful game of telephone from Allah to the Arch Angel Gabriel to Muhammad to his disciples who edited their combined works into what has become the Koran. The Koran is riddled with inconsistencies, monotony, repetitions and contradictions (like most every other religious text). How can clerics find a firm foundation on which to declare that they can be trusted to express the will of Allah? They can't, but millions in the Muslim world are unable to understand this and expose the extremists of their pretensions.

The clerics themselves that urge their followers to react so violently against the blasphemous infidel should examine the elements of their own motives. Is the institution of Islam that vulnerable that the 11 pathetic drawings of turban clad cartoons done by a handful of Danish atheists could present a danger to its founding principles? If the foundation is so shaky, then why are radical clerics able to easily recruit martyrs willing to blow themselves up in the name of that which is compassionate and merciful? The answer is contained in the absurdity of the question. Each Surah (chapter) of the Koran begins with a dedication to Allah as the compassionate and merciful. How is killing people and yourself, compassionate or merciful? Rather the killing is done in the name of the clerics. Those that manipulate life and death are playing the role of god and those that kill themselves for the manipulator's sake are the subjects. Therefore every Jihadist is themselves an infidel for they are worshiping the false idols represented by the hate mongering clerics.

I urge all Muslims throughout the world to restrain their anger caused by these images from the Netherlands. The overreaction is a disguised compensation that inadvertently exposes the weakness of the religion. Extremism does a disservice to the religion of Islam and to all of it's followers that must bear the embarrassing brunt of the radical stereotype.

* I applied the term "divine entity" to both Allah and Muhammad. This was not an accident. If one would read the Koran, they would see that the prophet Muhammad consistently uses the first person both when talking of himself and as the creator. Islamic scholars have dismissed this subtlety as a matter of style or interpretation, however, given that Muhammad used his religious interpretation as a means of conquering millions of square miles and governing millions of subjects, it can be said with a great deal of confidence that Muhammad used God to suit his own agenda, much as Bush or Osama invoke the god of Abraham today. So we can infer that Allah and Muhammad are both the same entity.

** It is true that Christians believe that Jesus was the son of God, but that makes him no more a god than it does Hercules or Xena Warrior Princess. The demigod status allows for Christians not to feel so insulted when a crucifix is dropped in urine or the life of Jesus is poorly reenacted by Willem DaFoe.