This is what I get for going too long between vents. The more I read in the papers the more confused and angry I seem to become. Let's take two events, one major and one that should have been major but got little coverage in the San Diego Tribune.
First, has anyone not heard about the cartoons involving Mohammed? If you've been sleeping for the last few weeks you can read the story here. Because of some Danish cartoonists depicting Mohammed in not necessarily the most flattering of light we have had riots, massive property damage, dozens of injuries, and even deaths. Some of the extremists within Islam are calling for the deaths of the cartoonists, claiming that any depictions of Mohammed are prohibited by the Koran. Apparently that is not true. While Islam carries the same prohibitions against graven images as the Christian Bible, there is no explicit prohibition against creating images of Mohammed (see here). Now it has come to the surface that not only is the initial argument about the prohibition against images of Mohammed bogus, but so are some of the images circulated by come Islamic leaders being used as instigation and agitation of Arabs around the world! And they want to be called the religion of peace?! Let's get real. At lunch the other day with my friend Andrew I compared how the "peaceful" radical Islamists handle the cartoons with those of how fundamentalist Christians handled the infamous Piss Christ and The Virgin Mary where we have in one a crucifix submerged in urine and the other an image of Mary splattered with elephant dung. I searched for reports of rioting Christians, acts of vandalism, injury, and killings... couldn't even find a Christian fahtwa. Let's see, on the one hand we have Mohammed, a prophet, whose image is drawn, not necessarily in the most flattering of light. On the other we have a crucifix, a symbol of God incarnate at the supreme moment of passion, submerged in a jar of human waste along with a depiction of Mary, the mother of Jesus, the one the Bible declares to be the most blessed of women, covered in animal excrement. Geeze, which would you think should generate the most heat? What's worse, my own government, headed by those who are supposed be of my party and represent my values, are screwing up again. On the one hand our state department seems to be saying that the cartoonists were naughty and shouldn't have done it while President Bush says that we stand by our friends in the Netherlands. Please, people, one signal (and in this case it had better be at least on the side of Bush's rather lukewarm support).
The second story is somewhat related to the other at least tangentially. Last year a mother in Queens, Andrea Skoros, sued the New York City public school system after being told her kids' Nativity scene could not be a part of the holiday display although a Hanukkah menorah and the star and crescent representing Islam could be exhibited. The school officials said that the display was of secular symbols and did include a Christmas tree (oops... shouldn't say that, in our screwed up world we are supposed to say "holiday tree", which I suppose means I can keep mine up all year round since we have holidays throughout the year and those who demand the use of the "holiday tree" term don't specify WHICH holiday... naw, I'll call it what it is, a Christmas tree). What is frightening is that today a small AP article states that a federal appeals court has upheld the school's policy. What idiots! The menorah isn't a religious symbol? Are those people completely ignorant of what the menorah symbolises?! And the star and crescent represents what? (Is there ANYONE who doesn't know... anyone?) I am so happly at least one judge dissented, the brave Judge Chester Straub, who said that the policy utilizes religious symbols of certain religions but bans the symbols of another. So let's see, the school places symbols of certain religions in the display but has banned a nativity scene... how can anyone disagree with Judge Straub's commonsense dissent? As Mrs Skoros has said, she never was wanting the other symbols removed, just add an appropriate symbol for the nearly two billion Christians. Now, if she were a (so called) peaceful extreme Islamist do you think she would be seeking the addition at least one symbol of equal communicative value, or the subtraction of all symbols not a part of Islam? And yet gentle readers, what religion, what one set of beliefs is it okay to disparage and ban in our supposed modern age? Here, let me help you, it isn't Islam...
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