I'm about to say a few things that might be deemed controversial, so here's the customary
DISCLAIMER:
If you think you are too sensitive to engage in open debate, or even any debate on religion, then shove off. I'm going to say a few things that might sound ugly, but I have no intent whatsoever of insulting any religious group. I'm a Christian myself and I know what it is like to have my faith insulted. It burns like fire and is as aggravating as a speculation on the origins of one's parents. Rest assured, I do not wish to subject any religious person to grievious invective.
BUT THIS IS MY BLOG AND I SAY WHAT I WANT ON MY BLOG.
You can try to suicide-bomb me, you crazy-assed jabbering fanatics, and you can try to throw me into detention barracks, you squinty eyed ISD lackeys of the squinty eyed Dear Leeder, but I will say what I want on my own turf.
If you're feeling particularly temperamental, go search for obscene Polytechnic student videos and don't come back to my blog.
So here goes.
I think its abhorrent and downright bastaric to mock an established religion by caricaturing it. Especially in the form of cartoons. If I had a chance I would "caricature" the mothers and grandmothers of those cartoonists (perhaps as some kind of rabid canine) and see how they'd react to my form of presenting the people/ideas that are dear to them. That's my "freedom of expression", is it not?
Now having said that I think the brutal reaction by the more extreme believers of Islam is twice as loathsome and thrice as retarded. Someone insulted your religion. Very nasty and very wrong indeed. So you go and burn down shops and embassies and companies and riot in the streets braying for and taking the blood of innocents who had nothing to do with the cartoonists. Nothing whatsoever.
You bloody inhuman motherfuckers. Your brutality is exceeded only by your stupidity.
You have just caused a greater insult to your religion than all the infidel cartoonists in the world could ever have done.
And your reaction, no, grotesque over-reaction, has just sealed my belief in Samuel Huntington's statement that "Islam has bloody borders".
Just let me qualify this further.
If someone had mocked Jesus Christ in a cartoon, I'd be hopping mad as well. As would a billion other believers out there.
But I believe that NONE of those believers would take to the streets and burn and kill and destroy and shed innocent blood in the name of Christ.
The cartoonists would face damnation and God's judgement, that's for sure, but that is no reason for us mere mortals to take divine justice into our own hands and go round venting our anger on innocents, which is exactly what those bunch of jabbering lunatics in Pakistan and the Middle East are doing. You see, the Bible has never allowed man to wreak holy vengeance according his own flawed perspectives of justice.
For that matter, where were the hordes of rioting Buddhists when the Taliban started to smash the giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan? Did Buddhists launch a worldwide campaign to destroy Saudi Arabian and Egyptian businesses worldwide? Did Buddhist monks go on a rampage to burn down mosques and tear down minarets and shed the blood of innocents?
Those Muslims who did stage peaceful protests against the cartoons were fully justifed in doing so (even those who led peaceful boycotts of European imports). They were true Muslims. I agree that Islam has bloody borders not because Islam is a bloodthirsty religion with bloodthirsty teachings. It is not. In fact, it is teaching of peace.
But I agree with Huntington because as a religion Islam is so much more prone to being hijacked by bloodthirsty people for their own twisted abominations, and because its teachings are so much more frequently warped by madmen with bombs disguised as holy men with turbans than is the case with other world religions. Why is this so? There must be some origin for this. There is some dangerous loophole in religious doctrine that Muslims must come to identify and face and admit its existence and seal.
I have Muslim friends. I accept that their faith is as every bit as noble-minded as my own.
But again I have to say that in recent times it was not Buddhism nor Hinduism nor Christianity that was used to justify terrorist acts that took the blood of thousands of innocents. It was Islam.
I do not condemn Islam when I agree it has bloody borders. That agreement is made with the deepest pity for Islam's true believers and the darkest hatred for those who have hijacked it and created the very borders that are stained with blood. But it is the responsibility of the true believers of Islam to find out what is making their great religion so susceptible to being perverted by pyschopaths, to admit the existence of such a problem, and to fix the problem.
The Church has its own share of shame and blood on its hands. We launched the Crusades, wars of brutality and inhumanism. We used Paul's letters to justify Negro slavery. And we turned a blind eye to the injustices of colonialism and imperialism. But we have matured. We no longer advocate what is evil in fighting evil. The Church has matured. Now it is up to true Muslims to prove that their religion is mature as well.
And by the way, to all those left-wing pansies.
I still support the war in Iraq despite all the retardedness of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. US soldiers do not kill innocent children on purpose. Al Qaeda does.
Ok so the pic wasnt taken at the Bernabeu but that isnt the point