Silly violent people being silly and violent

Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the Danish muslim cartoon furore, which has now escallated with the burning of the Danish embassies in Damascus and Beirut.

Worth a read.

And, I'm sorry, I can't see how anyone can defend the thugs who are making death threats, and the Arabic governments (eleven of them) who demanded the Danish government censure the newspaper for publishing them. (Libya actually closed its embassy.)

Do these people* even realise that the reason such stereotypical views of them have such resonance IS THAT THEY KEEP DOING THIS STUFF?

Sure, I can see that the cartoons might annoy me if I were a muslim. The vast majority of muslims aren't terrorists, obviously, and the cartoon with a bearded bloke holding a bomb in his turban does kind of imply that they are. Or does it? It's just as logical to interpret the cartoon as critical of those idiot terrorists who do pretend to be acting in the name of Islam. It's not criticising Islam - it's mocking those who take its name in vain.

Say, for comparison, there'd been a spate of, I don't know, bombings by some Irish catholic members of the IRA, fifteen years ago, and a cartoon had been published satirising these terrorists as hypocritical bible-thumping murderers - would that have been a stereotype of Irish catholics in general? Not really. Not at all. And even the IRA wouldn't have burned down any embassies protesting it.

But the protesters in this case aren't just objecting to offensive cartoons which might imply that they're terrorists. (Which I could understand, although, really, get over it.) They're objecting on the grounds of BLASPHEMY. Blasphemy?! In the twenty-first century? Get out of here.

Do these governments understand that in democratic countries the government DOESN'T control the press? (Or at least, certainly not as overtly as it would have to to comply with their demands.) Is this such a difficult concept for them that they simply don't get it? ("If these were published here, we'd have the editors arrested, charged with blasphemy and executed. What, that's not the way it's done over there? Barbarians!")

And, yes, the right-wing blogs (who are having a field day with this) are, for once, fairly on the money - who the hell do these people think they are? Death to someone for publishing a cartoon? Boycotts of an entire country because of a page in a private newspaper? You don't see these countries apologising every time someone burns an American flag (and nor should you; I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy).

Listen, guys. Religious fundamentalism being forced on other people is a thoroughly unpleasant thing no matter who's doing it. We don't want to live in a theocracy of any persuasion. It's bad enough for you to enforce your interpretation of religious law in your own countries - but to think you can do it around the world? Staggering.

ps If the RWDBs are right, and The Age is refusing to publish the cartoons out of concerns for sensitivity, that is indeed pretty weak.

* Anyone calling for boycotts, fatwas, jihads, criminal penalties etc.

UPDATE: Slacktivist's post on this has a slightly different perspective, which is worth contemplating. And Saint has had excellent coverage for the last few days.

UPDATE #2: Hang on a second. One thing I hadn't realised was that these cartoons were published IN SEPTEMBER LAST YEAR. I'd assumed from the coverage that they'd been published last week or something. (And whilst Tim Blair is receiving kudos for "bravely" publishing them on his blog now, Saint published them back in October.)

So how did these suddenly become news again now? Have they really been going on about this for FOUR MONTHS?! And we thought John Howard was shameless with the political diversions. These faux-muslim leaders leave him in the dust!