This is not the first time religion has been misinterpreted nor will it be the last. I very much doubt the sense of outrage we are seeing has much left to do with the publication of the cartoon; it was in my opinion merely a trigger. It has allowed fundamentalists to fan the flames of whatever political agenda’s they are following, to stir up religious fervor and dissent and to focus it for their own ends. Religious war, an abhorrent contradiction in terms, is just too easy — the holy deity / prophet you are fighting for is not around to instill common sense and rational thought, the common man is often not educated too the level of the religious zealot and thus swallows any deliberate misinterpretation without question. No culture or religion is immune, from the bloody rituals and games of the Aztecs to the burning of witches and enemies of the Church, Europe and America have been through this process, albeit many years ago.
Should the cartoonist have published the article, probably not — common sense dictates that level of bad taste in a politically and religiously volatile world arena is just plain stupid. Should the cartoonist have the right to publish the cartoon, I believe so.
If this were handled differently, the swathed militants holding banners to execute critics of Islam would have had a lot more sympathy and a lot more support. Instead they come across as irrational, militant and beyond reason and that loses them any sympathy they may have garnered from a more tempered approach.
Mohammed was a man of immense vision and intellect, he was a gifted statesman and a mediator — on many fronts he smoothed relations between rival cities like Medina and Mecca that were close to war. He tried to bring the Arabs, Christians and Jews together in understanding the worship of the one monotheistic God.
He emphasized the importance of Abraham and his son Ishmael and initially declared that the Ka’aba in Mecca was a shrine built by Abraham in honour of Monotheism, in other words for all faiths of the one God.
He was a superb example of the evolution of the human spirit. He preached tolerance and practiced his faith through his actions and it is in this vain that I firmly believe the gun toting, hysteria that has inflamed the world brings more shame to his name than any stupid cartoon ever could.
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