Islam: Religion or fanatical brotherhood?

 

Any truly serious work of art should make some attempt to explore the human condition.  One of the best ways of doing that is by challenging cherished beliefs, often through satire.  Be it in a novel or play or painting or cartoon or in whatever form of art.  By demanding apologies and even death for those involved in publishing cartoons about Mohammad in Western publications and by issuing fatwas to kill authors like Salman Rushdie, Muslim fanatics are directly challenging our right to freedom of expression even in our own countries. 
 
It should also be noted that in the Islamic world it is quite acceptable to tell the greatest lies about infidels.  For example, several Arab nations continue to broadcast the lies about "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an anti-Semitic hoax pretending to be some kind of Jewish plan to rule the world. 

Isn't it strange how Muslims never protest the beheading and bombing of infidels but are oh-so-sensitive whenever a democracy takes baby steps to protect itself?  And of course moderate Muslims who speak out against the fanatics or who simply displease them are liable to be assassinated.  Even the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature in Egypt was knifed by a fanatic.  And let's not forget that Bobby Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Sirhan a Muslim fanatic whose act changed American history. 

 
The uproar over the cartoons has its positive aspects:  At last the world is waking up to Islam's hypocrisy, intolerance, double standards, penchant for violence and primitive nature.
 

"Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne, Yet touch'd and sham'd by Ridicule alone."  -  Alexander Pope

"Historians...may be considered as satirists, and satirists most severe; since such are most human actions, that to relate, is to expose them."  -  Edward Young

"Satire of this kind has no desire to be decorous.  Decorum - and what hides behind it - is what it is attacking.  To ask a satirist to be in Good Taste is like asking a love poet to be less personal.  Good Taste is inimical to what makes satire satirical...by ordinary standards works of satire are shocking.  Which is what they intend to be...for the purpose of challenging habitual beliefs and values; for the purpose of dislocating the reader, getting him to view a familiar subject in a way he may be unwilling, or unaccustomed to."   -  Philip Roth

Click here to see all 12 cartoons

Return to Welcome Page