Muslims And The Right Not To Be Offended

You might recall that I mentioned that Danish police jailed three jihadis they caught plotting to murder Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists behind the famous Mohammed Cartoons..and in solidarity, a dozen Danish papers re-ran the cartoons.

Since then, Danish 'youths' have been on the rampage for seven straight nights burning cars and buildings, like this elementary school in Copenhagen, and about twenty Muslim 'youths' have already been arrested.



Meanwhile, the 73 year-old Westergaard with a fatwa on his head is under heavy guard in fear of his life.

Now it's a funny thing...I could sit here and write for hours about the things that offend Muslims and still only scratch the surface. Whether it's pictures of Mohammed, Winnie the Pooh, uppity women and their clitorises, Jews, Pokeman, dogs, alchohol,homosexuals, any references to Islamic Terrorism as Islamic terrorism, Christians building churches or worshipping in 'Muslim' land,or a slew of other provocations, one thing's as certain as the sun rising in the east - a substantial percentage of the proponents of the Religion Of Peace will react with seething rage and violence.

Of course, one could sum up what seems to offend the majority of Muslims quite nicely as simply the inherant nature of living in a secular democracy where ideas - and let's be honest about it, whole groups of people - are free to believe or to live in ways that Islam's supremist ideology finds dangerous.

That's what summons up what I can only call medieval savagery.

What we're really talking about, of course, is the right to be offended and what one has the right to do about it.

Now, as far as I'm concerned, Muslims have a perfect right to be offended by the relatively inocuous cartoons of Mohammed. There are certain cartoons that offend me as well,like the hideous scribblings promoting Jew hatred or Holocaust denial rampant in the Muslim world and appearing on an almost daily basis.

But it's the response that's the problem. As a matter of fact, I'd venture to say that I'm just as offended by Muslim reactions to the MoToons as Muslims are by the cartoons themselves.

Except when something offends me, I don't strap a bomb to myself to blow up the innocent, burn mosques,torch buildings, or behead people and call it something Holy.I write about it and attempt to educate people..to influence the debate, as it were.

So far, hydrophobic Muslims who choose to vent their rage using murder and destruction have pretty much gotten a pass. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were to change in the near future. If Muslims continue with this sort of behavior,a lot of more non-Muslims - and thus, their governments - are going to decide that expulsion, murder and destruction is a lot more effective way of dealing with the problem than merely writing outraged pieces or trying to Understand Their Rage And What We May Have Done To Provoke Them, ad nauseum.

Once that happens, Muslims are going to have a bigger problem than a few cartoons to deal with, given the West's superior ability to dole out carnage when sufficiently provoked.

It would be far better for those Muslims who seem to think that they have a right to respond violently to whatever happens to offend them to learn to live peacefully with a certain non-violent level of 'offense', I think.