As a guy who writes comics lampooning a revered religious figure, I've been asked more than a few times what I think about some cartoons depicting Muhammed igniting violent riots around the Islamic world.

Hardline Muslims seem to be bothered that someone outside of their religion violated one of their religious taboos. Now, I am not going to say that people from other religions do not do this-- Catholics fulminate against abortion, Baptists against pornography, Mormons against drinking-- but I am going to make a case for consistancy: I dislike it when anyone tries to force their religious convictions on others.

In addition, I have a real problem with the bullying tone that they're taking. They may have very real concerns about how their religion is portrayed, but how one chooses to seek redress is manifestly important. Burning and rioting and such are not acceptable, nor is the threat of violence against people who say things you don't like to hear. Over the last 20 years radical muslims have increasingly employed a tactic of threatening-- and carrying out-- violent reprisals for any critique of their religion; in my mind, this is nothing more than unacceptably abhorent intimidation. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, "I will gladly discuss any issue, but will not say one word until the person at the other podium puts down the gun".

Lastly, I think that there is a certain element of farce to this whole fracas. The cartoons the Muslim world are angry about are not necessarily the fairly benign dozen that were actually published by the Danish paper. Danish imams created this issue by generating very, very offensive pictures of Muhammed themselves and dishonestly reporting to the Muslim community that these were the work of the Danish press. Why would they do such a thing? What lies at the heart of this entire episode is a hardline Islamic anti-Western sentiment; there is not necessarily any genuine indignation over this specific act. At each of the rallies that I've read about the crowd seems to end up chanting "Death to America"-- despite the fact that no U.S. paper ran the cartoons and the State department quickly denounced the cartoons as "insensitive". It seems clear that no amount of apologizing will change their belief that we are infidels who must accept their way of life or perish.

If they're going to dislike me so much no matter what I say, well, I'm not going to waste my time trying to appeal to their silly sensibilities. Fuck them and the camel they rode in on. Keep the comics coming!