February 6, 2006

As you know, I hate it when webcomic authors sacrafice their comics to push their petty political opinions on their readership. I consider it a violation, not unlike whoring, of a webcomic to do that.

However, I've always been a big fan of using the news area to rant about politics, so...

WARNING... POLITICAL RANT:

The muslim reaction to the Danish paper's political cartoons has really got me annoyed.

It's one thing to hate the US because we're invading muslim countries. That's a pretty good reason to hate us. I can understand that. And I can understand hating Israel for occasionally lobbing rockets into Palestine. That I can also understand. But their reaction to a few images unflattering to Mohammed is just unacceptable.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's a big deal in their religion, but I don't give a crap. Islam in general has gone way too far this time. Because this time, they're not pissed about being invaded, they're not pissed about being killed from the skys. They're pissed about a country internally exercising freedom of the press. Denmark didn't do anything to any islamic country. All they did, at a national level, was not censor their newspapers. And muslims all over the world are DEMANDING that Denmark effectively rescind their freedom of speech. And that's what I find flatly unacceptable.

I know this will sound racist, but you know what? Islamic cultures are fucked up. I'm not talking about arabs here. I'm talking about Islam. Like any society, it'll have social norms and internal workings that are destructive and need to be addressed. American society, for instance, is too obsessed with guns. So we lose lots of people every year to gun violence. That's a social issue we have to deal with. Islam, meanwhile, is now developing and nurturing a culture of hate and intolerence. A complete lack of respect for any culture not their own, and an utter contempt for any kind of dissent. And rather than be responsible and fight these tendencies, the various islamic governments foster it to solidify their own positions.

And there's such an incredible amount of hypocracy in their position, too. I'm always seeing images of them burning American flags, but if a US soldier drops a Koran, that's cause for a riot. Many islamic nations have state-sponsored antisemetic propaganda that harkens back to World War Two levels of hate-spewing, but a few (truly offensive) cartoons causes them to burn embassies?

And don't tell me this is the work of the extreme lunatic fringe. The occasional suicide bombing or shooting is lunatic fringe. Riots are not lunatic fringe. Riots are, almost by definition, the truest expression of the majority.

Islamic culture needs a makeover. If they continue at this rate, really really bad shit will befall them. And believe it or not, I really don't want that.

-ATW