Decius wrote:
This page links the cartoon in case you are curious. Yeah, its inceditary, but give me a fucking break.

Hamas members, some armed with guns, stormed the EU office and demanded apologies from EU member states, or face serious consequences. "It will be a suitable reaction, and it won't be predictable," said Abu Hafss, a member of the Al Quds Brigade (an affiliate of the group Islamic Jihad).

A suitable reaction? What are they going to do, draw their own cartoon? "I'll draw this fucking cartoon, man! I'm serious! I'll draw it! You better back down right now or the pen is hitting the paper! I'm not fucking around here!"

The more these idiots prance around with machine guns and threaten to kill people over a cartoon, the more they reenforce the inceditary message the cartoon conveys. If they aren't a violent culture they should put down the AK-47s and act like they aren't a violent culture.

Absolutely right.

I have many friends who are intelligent, compassionate, reasonable Muslims. They live in my street, I work with them, I see and hear them every day. They are good people and good friends.

There is a group in that community however who believe that throwing a temper tantrum is not only a way of getting attention, but of getting what they want. They do not represent Muslims as a whole (no more than the "Nuke the Commies" crowd represented reasonable Americans in the 60s, or the fundamentalists Christians do today) but naturally they get most of the press attention.

In everyone's interest they should do what most of my friends have done - say that the cartoons were objectionable (and they can argue a good case not based on medieval thought systems but on cultural stereotyping) but then they shrug their shoulders and get on with dealing with life's real problems.

And one of those is finding a way to reconcile the reasonable West with reasonable Muslims at a time when the West's idea of a temper tantrum is too readily to go to war.

RE: Tensions continue to rise in Middle East over Cartoons