Picture This

So the world is agog with the latest absurdist outrage, which involves a series of editorial cartoons published in Denmark and Norway that depict the prophet Mohammed satirically wearing bombs in his turban, or so I gather, since no American paper dares to reprint the "offending" drawings. Needing even more fodder for their weekly jihad, militant Islamists have fomented major protests throughout the Eastern Hemisphere, trashing Danish embassies and screaming about European insensitivity to their religion, which proscribes any pictoral description of its Founding Father.

Even within the context of religious insanity, this is a standout example of the irrationality and instability that superstition in the form of religious fervor has so dangerously foisted on our planet. As I understand major world religions, it's been arbitrarily determined by the ruling fascists who claim to represent their particular Almighty whether it's appropriate or blasphemous to depict the major prophets. The Egyptians, Sumerians, etc., had little Osirises and Baals all over the place for convenient supplicating. The Greeks and Romans erected statues by the thousands portraying Zeus et al. When the Jews rolled in, they also had early idols (as revealed by archeological digs) but these were destroyed, along with evidence of the female goddess influence, by misogynistic tribal leaders who preferred the concept of an invisible, and therefore, unknowable god. (It is more than likely that the "invisible God" idea is the greatest con ever perpetrated on the human species, even worse than anything devised by James Frey, Clark Clifford or Dick Cheney).

The proscription against idol worship, established in the final edition of the Torah to help distinguish Jews from other Semitic tribes, only applies to Yahweh, and even he gets some kind of representation via fire in "The Ten Commandments." Other Jewish prophets are fair game for depiction, which was good news for Charleton Heston, as well as those actors doing Jacob and Joseph et al. on the cheesy Old Testament flicks on KXPN. The Christians, though borrowing much of the Jewish values, had no problem at all drawing and painting and whittlin' Jesus and his disciples and his countless martyrs. Without this laxity there would have been absolutely no Renaissance art, or the Christ in a bottle of piss. In fact, some Christians are so enamored of their icons that they project them hopefully onto barn rooves and grilled cheese sandwiches. The Buddhists have no objection to their Head Honcho being rendered usually as a jolly fat man, or worse, as Keanu Reeves. The Hindus like to display those funny figurines of weird humanoids with eight arms, not to mention the elephant deity that guards Apu's Kwik-e-Mart in "The Simpsons."

But the Moslems, god bless 'em, they don't want nobody messing with their main man. This is somewhat counterproductive if they wish to proselytize with movies like the one Mel Gibson just made. In fact, an epic was recently attempted about Mohammed, but eventually was scrapped because, well, he was the lead character but we weren't allowed to see him. A lot of off-screen pronouncements do not make for an involving film, it seems. On the other hand, you couldn't blame actors from shying away from their agent's calls to play the Prophet. That would be the first role to earn an Oscar and a Fatwa. Well, maybe Russell Crowe.

But let's address the issue of insensitivity as charged by the poor, poor Arab nations. They are declaiming against Denmark and Norway, two countries with a history of tolerance, decency and humanism (which makes them fair game, I guess). Denmark was the only country not to blithely hand in its Jews for slaughter in World War II. The Kind of Denmark wore a Jewish emblem on his sleeve, for Heaven's sake. And now they're supposed to apologize till the end of time for a tacky cartoon by one of their journalists?

Insensitivity, huh? These hurt feelings are emanating from the same governments that officially demand the destruction of Israel and the deaths of Jews worldwide. They decry any military action taken during Ramadan but were gung-ho to invade Israel on Yom Kippur. They claim as official truths that the Holocaust never happened but that the Protocols of the Elder of Zion was a real book (which the Egyptians turned it into a TV miniseries). Furthermore, it's the positions of the leading Iranians and Syrians and Saudis that not only were no Jews killed by the Nazis, but the Jews caused World War II in the first place in order to establish some kind of hegemony over the other 99.9% of the world population. Now THAT, my fucking Islamists--and may you all have little Muhammad figurines dipped in chile sauce and shoved up your collective asses--is insensitive. And if the craven governments of the world refuse to say so, then it's up to the truth-speaking bloggists such as myself to speak out.