Would you like a little cheese with that whine?
UPDATE: I have edited this post, because, well, I was wrong. If you remember or can find an archived copy of the original somewhere, you will see the changes made. Otherwise, yea for me.
I am getting really tired of all the pissing and moaning about showing respect for religious beliefs. I have two big issues with this whole conversation. One is the martyr act these people adopt, trying to play the vicitim of hate speech. Saying that Pat Robertson is losing his grip on reality and needs to shut the hell up isn't hate speech. Rude, maybe, but not hate speech. Drawing Mohammad with a bomb for a turban is not hate speech. In a country where two men have been assassinated for speaking out against Muslim extremism, on a continent subjected multiple times to suicide bomb attacks on crowded commuter lines, it's not an unreasonable criticism. Nor is it reasonable to expect a non-Muslim to adhere to Muslim proscriptions. For future reference, this is hate speech. So is this, and this.
As tempting as it is to call this, this and this hate speech, you can't really. It's simply offensive, and, to my way of thinking, ignorant.
Which brings me to number two. Interesting, isn't it, how those griping the loudest have no issues being offensive themselves? They are not interested in a "kinder, gentler" society. They simply want their critics silenced. You can say any damn fool thing you want as long as you have some scriptural reference to point to in support of your belief statement.
If you want the freedom to speak your religious beliefs with impunity then you better find the intestinal fortitude to take criticism of your beliefs. End of story.
Now let's bring this back to those stupid cartoons one more time. The KKK seems to have cleaned up its act. It's still a bunch of racist bigots, but, publicly at least, they have dropped much of the violent and hateful rhetoric. You don't hear of lynch mobs in white sheets any more. When the occasional burning cross does appear on a lawn in the South it's easier to believe the KKK that they had nothing to do with it. Why? Why the change? Because society pressured them to do so. Less and less were they able to find support for their expression of their religious beliefs. Their core values have not changed, but they way they express themselves has. (Hint KKK: A good next step would be to find a "racialist" web designer with some talent, because . . . damn.)
Do you think if they had continued to find support for their rhetoric and violent actions, they would have changed? Do you think if John Kerry lived back in the KKK's hey day to denounce cartoonists in the North for satirizing men in hooded white sheets the KKK would have had any incentive to change? Of course not. The world is a much larger stage, and more complex, but the principles remain the same. As long as people make apologies for statements critical of [one segment] of Islam, as long as excuses are made on Arabs' behalf—"they come from a harsh environment," "they are steeped in a culture of violence," "the West is reaping what it has sown in the Middle East"—as long as fellow Muslims remain largely mum, those perptrating acts of violence have no incentive to change.