You don't have to be a religious believer to understand the illogic of the situation described below by Mark Steyn:
When someone destroys a bible, US government officials don’t line up to attack him. President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. If you show a representation of Mohammed, European commissioners and foreign ministers line up to denounce you. If you show a representation of Jesus Christ immersed in your own urine, you get a government grant for producing a widely admired work of art. Likewise, if you write a play about Jesus having gay sex with Judas Iscariot.
So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for "respect" and "sensitivity" toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it.Naturally, Mark goes into great detail about the illogic of the situation, but the main point is covered pretty well in the two paragraphs above: the way we are dealing with Muslims... Muslims with extreme views of how their religious principles are to be applied in everyday life... is in an irrational and enabling way. If a man is known by his deeds, then a religion is known by the deeds of its followers... and either deserves respect or contempt. If the latter, then the appropriate response is disdain, disapproval, and disavowal... reactions that will ultimately cleanse a religion capable of being redeemed.
I know which way I am leaning... and it has nothing to do with mollifying.
Okay, maybe it has something to do with religion.