By now, if you haven't seen this cartoon of Muhammed, you've probably seen the true believers who are egging embassies and pledging undying bloody jihad against any infidel dog who dares suggest their religion inspires violence. Not much for irony, these fundamentalists.
Their reaction isn't surprising — it's near the doodle's editorial point, after all. What is surprising is the chorus of condemnation from Western politicians and pundits, decrying the cartoon for being irresponsibly insensitive to Muslims. Excuse us, but what we find irresponsible is our culture-wide refusal to criticize each other's lunatic beliefs in the name of "religious tolerance."
Just because a belief is "religious" doesn't mean it can't also be false, dangerous, backward and unacceptable in the modern world. When we, the modern world's inhabitants, bump up against such a belief, we shouldn't "tolerate" it — we should call bullshit on it. It is fair, reasonable, and maybe even necessary to "offend" people whose beliefs consist of irrational metaphysical fantasies.
Sure, sometimes religious beliefs are demonstrably false but basically cute, like when a little old Christian lady thinks Jesus' ghost gives a fuck whether she wins at BINGO or something. We'll let that kind of stuff slide.
But when Pat Robertson says Ariel Sharon's stroke was punishment from on high because Jehovah didn't care for the way Sharon was managing his real estate interests? Bullshit, we should say, and make a note not to see Robertson's neurologist. And when religious beliefs threaten the safety and well-being of decent, rational, un-superstitious-type folks all over the world — like they have periodically throughout human history and like they do in a big way now — well, their adherents need to be offended right the fuck out of them.
Non-muslim religious apologists will assert that the Koran is a great and important book, full of much wisdom. OK, sure, that's true of the Koran and of thousands of other books written before it and since. The advantage of most of these other books, though, is that no one believes a supernatural being wrote them, so we're free to point out what's nonsense in them without fear that some nutjob with perfect faith will firebomb us for it.
Let us mortal humans be clear about this with each other: no all-powerful, invisible superbeing has ever written a book for us. Just for starters, it's a silly way for an omnipotent being to get the Word out about His divine plan. Imagine your favorite religious superhero sitting in heaven, or Asgard, or the Sixth Dimension, or Shangri-La, or Mount Olympus, or on the back of the Great Turtle Spirit, or wherever he hangs out, thinking:
"I have limitless power over all creation, space and time. I wish to make all humankind aware of my designs for them. Shall I make the stones of the mountains speak of my wisdom? Shall I inscribe my commandments in the very skies?"
"Nah, I think I'll just plunk a book or two down in a remote corner of one of my deserts. I'm sure sooner or later some enterprising translator will spread it around. Hope he does a good job on the interlingual ambiguities."
This is plain old regular-type stupid. They ran the American Revolutionary hero Thomas Paine out of the country for saying so, but he was right. If there is a god, and he acted in this way, he's a doofus, and doesn't deserve your worship.
So, OK, the bad news is a majority of earthlings believe this nonsensical story about gods writing books. The worse news is they believe it about different gods and different books. The good news is that there's a remedy for this ridiculous state of affairs.
A few more books.