Monday, March 06, 2006

Fanatical (insert religion here)

It has come to my attention that certain Muslims are offended by cartoons about their prophet. Actually it has come to everyone's attention due to the overdramatization of the situation by the Muslim world. From discussions to demonstrations to full-blown riots, the condemnation of the Danish cartoons seems to be unable to reach a climax. Hopefully it will before the rioting escalates into violence, but then again depending on how one looks at things, maybe it already has.

I read a story in the Wall Street Journal just prior to writing this that covered a local French Muslim backlash against the reading of a 1741 play by Voltaire called "Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet". The article states that the play "uses the founder of Islam to lampoon all forms of religious frenzy and intolerance." It later mentions this weekend's message by bin Laden associate Ayman al-Zawahri which said the Danish cartoons "showed the West has double standards because 'no one dares to harm Jews...nor even to insult homosexuals.'"

Here is where my big problems with fanatical Islam arise. Why, as al-Zawahri says, does "no one [dare] to harm Jews"? Perhaps because fanatical Jews didn't pilot jetliners into the WTC and Pentagon on 9/11. Nobody has been running around scared of fanatical Christians or Hindus or Jews because none of these groups have committed mass-murders in the name of their Lord. Do we see Jewish mobs running rampant in Germany seeking retribution for the ill-treatment of their grandparents during the Holocaust? Do we see protestants terrorizing the Catholic Church worldwide in search of payback for sins against their faiths many centuries ago? Remember, it wasn't a hard-line Hinduist regime that blew up two 1,000-plus year old statues of Buddha because "calling them idols of infidels and repugnant to Islam."

In truth, as the WSJ article outlines, the Christian faith and Catholics in particular were outraged with Voltaire's play in the 18th century and "Roman Catholic clergymen denounced it as a thinly veiled anti-Christian tract." The Catholic king of France even banned Voltaire from Paris, forcing him to move to Geneva where the Swiss burned one of his books. However it appears the Church has taken a more "live and let live" approach to modern society. It does rebuke certain policies like abortion, but these stances never change for neither does the value of a life. In comparison, the effect of a play now 265 years old does tend to wane as the decades progress, and its offense to a few Muslims aside will hardly create shockwaves that reverberate through the masses.

Nearly every group on the face of this planet has in some way or another been victimized. The difference between the fanatics and the rest is that the latter have moved on while the former carries a grudge that must be avenged. Imagine Mel Gibson in the movie Payback magnified by about ten thousand. This number of fanatical Muslims (probably more, but ten thousand is a nice round number) give the other billion a bad name by screaming "ALLAH!!" while they run around bombing discos and markets in an attempt to purify the world.

In the words of one French daily, "Help us Voltaire. They've gone mad."

6 comments:

Sonic said...

"Nobody has been running around scared of fanatical Christians or Hindus or Jews"

Unless of course you happen to be a Palestinian in the occupied lands or a Muslim caught up in a pogrom in India or a Tutsi in Rawanda or a catholic in Northern Ireland or a sinahalese in Sri Lanka.

Jeremy said...

Palestinians = Muslims that want a state near the Jewish holy land. What's stopping them from moving to, say, the hundreds of millions of square miles of native Arab land around Israel and closer to Mecca?

Indian Muslim: In a country that's about 80% Hindu, that's pretty funny to be calling them fanatical. That's clever interpreting a term that arose from the mistreatment of European Jews as meaning religious contempt for Muslim minorities in India.

Tutsi in Rwanda: Two words ... ETHNIC CLEANSING! Look it up and tell me what that has to do with religion.

Northern Irish Catholics: July 2005 the IRA announced an end to its armed camapaign.

Sinhalese in Sri Lanka: Do you even know the difference between ethnicity and religiosity?!

I am talking about fanatical Muslims as a tiny minority of the WORLD population wreaking havoc on everyone else. This isn't a Christian vs Muslim thing. It is a Muslim vs not Muslim thing.

Nice try though, you exhibited much more intelligence than anyone who has ever commented on here before.

Anonymous said...

"Palestinians = Muslims that want a state near the Jewish holy land. What's stopping them from moving to, say, the hundreds of millions of square miles of native Arab land around Israel and closer to Mecca?"

Why should they have to move elsewhere? Palestine is their native land, just as Israel is that of the Jews. Palestinians have a claim to that land, and shouldn't worry about their houses being bombed or bulldozed and their families being killed by IDF forces and American weapons. I don't think the Jews should be killed off, or even forcibly relocated, but it's moronic to assume that Jews have a claim to the land and Palestinians don't, and that Palestinians won't be pissed off when they're forcibly removed.

And what about Eric Rudolph, Christianity has had its fair share of extremists. Wasn't Pat Robertson calling for assassination of political leaders? Doesn't the KKK pride itself of being Christian? Aren't gays and blacks dragged behind cars in the name of a Christian God?

"Nice try though, you exhibited much more intelligence than anyone who has ever commented on here before."

I doubt you could be more of a pompous asshole. And shave your goatee, you look like you were born in a trailer park... I guess you're going for the bigoted white-trash look though.

Anonymous said...

What about Bosnia? Wasn't the whole point of that to protect the Muslim minority from being ethnically cleansed by the Christian majority?

Jeremy said...

i will only say this once as to avoid the "pompous asshole" image ... I HATE ANONYMOUS POSTERS ... you hold no credibility in my book

if you want to say something intelligent, put your name behind it. otherwise get the f**k out of here. tell me 1st anonymous, when did pat robertson blow up 3,000 innocents? or when did 3,000 palestinians get bombed by the IDF? actually, i was going for the proud to be a man who actually can grow facial hair as opposed to the pussies that pass for men today by waxing their eyebrows and such.

2nd anonymous, please refer to the two words prominent in my last comment ... the whole point of the NATO bombing raids (since we can't call it anything else without lying) was to protect the ALBANIAN MINORITY from the oppressive YUGOSLAVIAN DICTATOR. Milosevic tried to ETHNICALLY CLEANSE the region of Kosovo in the late 1990s and that is why we intervened.

... sigh ...

Anonymous said...

to the anonymous person who made the rude comment about Jeremy's goatee...

I love it when people remind us that there are Christian terrorists. Either we really look that stupid, or you have grossly misjudged our grasp of this topic. Yes, for the last time, there are psychos in Christianity. Hell, there are even Sikh terrorists! However, all of these groups pale in comparison to Muhammad's thugs in Islam. Christian extremists are far less deadly, and they don't actually rule states like Iran. Christian crazies usually just complain about what they think is the problem, they rarely go out and bomb buildings, behead innocent people, blow themselves up in a marketplace, stone women, force women to wear a massive blanket with slits for their eyes, and burn effigies of random leaders from the west.

Anyways, I don't think I really need to explain myself. The facts show that Christian extremists are relatively harmless when compared to Islam.