I know that not a soul is going to actually read this but I just need to get it off my heart.
The second round of the Mohammad cartoon crisis is sort of rolling and I just happened to watch a round of the Doha Debates on BBC World (March 8th) where the otherwise intelligently sounding ex-islamist Ed Husain had this argument concerning the cartoons:
Jyllandsposten turned down cartoons of Jesus. Therefore the Mohammed cartoons were inflammatory.
What does that have to do with anything?
If I can find a cartoon of Jesus published by Jyllandsposten, does that mean they were not inflammatory? If I can find two cartoons is it then alright to publish two cartoons of Mohammad? What is the connection?
Whether they published 20 cartoons of 20 prophets or none at all is beside the point: Islamic taboos have no jurisdiction in Denmark. No person, living or dead, religious idol or atheist scientist, is safe from criticism. The job of the press is to point out problems in the real world (which old religious texts do not get to identify) and that is what they did with the cartoons: there is a real problem with Islamic extremism in this world.
The irony of this is that the otherwise intelligent Ed Husain had come to the Doha Debates to argue that the Islamic world is not doing enough to combat Islamic extremism. I totally agree with him and so did 74 percent of the audience in Qatar.
Well the cartoons were simply pointing out that fact.
Stop the terrorists and there will be no need to draw Mohammed with any explosive devices what so ever.