A Fundamental Secular and Religious Difference

As Muhammad said, “war is deceit,” and us ill-informed, timorous, naïve, and easily fooled “unbelievers” have had sand thrown in our eyes, our hopes and fears are being played on like a cheap Chinese violin and, buffeted, blinded and disoriented, we are constantly being turned around, mislead and deceived by Muslims, by Islam and by their agents and allies and partisans in the West; we are being very carefully led down the path to our own destruction.
As has already been said, while there may be “moderate Muslims” there is no “moderate Islam,” and the fact of the matter is that, as the writer says, a la Mao and his “Peoples War,” the sea of “moderate Muslims” is where the Jihadis swim, and get their oxygen, their food , and their concealing cover. If it were not for the absolutely essential cover and support they receive from “moderate Muslims,” the Jihadis would not be able to operate with anywhere near the freedom that they currently have; Muslim solidarity against us hated “unbelievers,” and the law of Muslim “Omerta” have served the Jihadis extremely well.
The Jihadis are not “Islamists” or “radicals,” or “fundamentalist” Muslims, nor are they a “fringe group” but rather, they are very much mainstream Muslims for, from what they say, from the passages of the Qur’an, from the sayings and incidents in Muhammad’s career, from the precedents from Muslim history they cite as justifications for their actions, they are grounded in, embody, and are acting out the fundamental viewpoint, tenets and goal of the conversion, enslavement, or killing of all unbelievers and of the world’s conquest by Islam that is the central thrust of the Qur’an, of Muhammad’s life, and of Islam itself.
The billion or so “moderate Muslims” are ominously silent spectators, gathered on the sidelines of the current battlefield where their more activist coreligionists, the Jihadis, attack and fight and kill us unclean, hated “unbelievers” (including those Muslims who the Jihadis find insufficiently orthodox in viewpoint, or those Muslims who unfortunately happen to be “collateral damage” when the Jihadis are just trying to “get ‘er done”). I view the silence of these “moderate Muslims” and their inaction—no statements or demonstrations of any kind or size against Jihad and Muslim violence and terror, no proposed major excision of the violent parts from the Qur’an, or popular centers, leaders, or movements pushing this idea–as acquiescence, not disapproval, for, after all, the Qur’an tells them that any spoils wrested from the unbelievers will be their legitimate war booty. They are not our saviors; they are Islam’s reserve battalions, which will come in on the side of the Jihadis for the final kill.
Islam is not a religion but a violent, supremacist, totalitarian military and political ideology cloaked in the thinnest of religious disguise, an ideology that has been very carefully created to be impervious to reform, and any real and thorough reform would take the heart out of Islam and destroy it. While “containment” of Islam might be possible, compromise with Islam is not; Islam is not built for compromise.
There really are only one of two possible outcomes here, either the “unbeliever” democracies of the West recover their “civilizational confidence,” and their clear moral vision, we decide that us unbelievers and our civilization and ideals are, indeed, worth defending and fighting for, and after a very long or a very short and incredibly bloody struggle involving nuclear weapons, Islam is decisively defeated, or Islam wins its war of deceit, subversion and violence, the West and all its nations and peoples are conquered and enslaved, and we enter a new Dark Ages.

No one knows. I don't think that there are any images drawn, or made during his lifetime that exist today. Thus, any image that is drawn and labeled as Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, is going to be offensive, regardless of what it looks like. What offends is the label. A drawing of a dog is a dog. However if the drawing is labeled Mohammed it is offensive. A drawing of an alien is an alien. If it is labeled Mohammed it is offensive. The point is this - the offense taken is actually without any basis whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned you can label a picture of a pig, Mohammed and it would fit to me. I'm sorry if that offends. It just pleases my sensibilities.

Islam does not observe the iconography that Christianity does: In some
Muslim countries, school crossing signs and restroom doors have figures
without heads as it is believed that any image of people [let alone the
major prophet of their faith] is wrong. In many Christian sects icons,
statues, large paintings of Yeshu'a [Jesus] abound and his image is prom
inently placed in the family shrine, usually next to the TV...While a
few old-order Christians do not allow any human face images and do not
have religious artwork in their homes or places of worship, I think we
shud leave Islam to its own beliefs and not expect 'Mohammed-Art' in
Mosques, Copies of The Quran, in Muslim cemeteries and on T-shirts...
Aaron Allen..

Unless journalists exercise free speech, the intimidators have won. I think it needs to be sublime--millions of publications at once, a regular onslaught of Mohammed images. We are watching fundamentalist religious zealots successfully implement sharia law even in countries that have free speech written into their constitutions. People are inflicting it on themselves out of fear.

I think the only way to break the chokehold that Islam has on the world is to avoid adopting sharia, even if we must give our lives for it. Live free or die.

I'm something of a first amendment extremist and I tend to get annoyed when people mistake censorship for editorial intelligence.

The question is not "Can the media publish images of Muhammad?" It's a question of "should."

Legally the media CAN publish the most offensive, pornographic caricatures of Muhammad that it wants. And I'll defend its right to do so adamantly.

On the question of whether it SHOULD, we're in dramatically different territory. I don't see much point in publishing editorial cartoons of Muhammad. I have some background in journalism and were I an editor I'd probably encourage my cartoonist to make the same point in a different way that doesn't provoke quite as much rage. I've written film reviews and opinion columns in the past where my editor has asked me to tone down a sexual reference. Did I feel "censored" maybe a little. Did I really NEED the sexual reference to make my point? No, not really. In the same sense, cartoonists don't NEED to provoke the response that a cartoon of Mohammad would generate.

It is selfish and narrow-minded to needlessly incite devout people, but censorship is a greater evil. The experts here seem to be completely in agreement. Is there a subtlety that I am missing?

A GOOD reason to publish caricatures of Muhammad comes from the very purpose of art, to evoke a reaction. When Muhammad is cited by people who are committing atrocities, their actions constitute a severe desecration of the faith. Images of that desecration serve as a potent description of the world's reaction. The offended should focus their anger on the true infidels.