including those at CNN.
To see the shirt, and others like it,
click here.
If you are in the mood, order one and send it to Norway’s Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion, Bjarne Håkon Hanssen.
Or maybe send a crate-load of the shirts to the leaders appeasers in the United Church of Canada
"We believe that the intention of publishing the cartoons has little to do with freedom of expression and much to do with incitement to racial and religious hatred," senior church representatives said in the letter released to the media on Friday.
"The cartoons suggest that Islam itself teaches, condones and encourages violence, bombings and the mistreatment of women. Furthermore, the implication is that all Muslims believe so as well.
"This we know to be untrue."
In Friday's letter, the United Church offered its "deepest regret that the name of Mohammad has been so tragically misused in the depictions of cartoons first published in Europe, but now also in Canada."
The cartoons suggest nothing of the sort. Rather, the cartoons disparage those Muslims who "teach, condone, and encourage bombings and mistreatment of women." The tragedy is that the leaders of the United Church of Canada do not understand the existential truths of the cartoons.
If politicians and church leaders weren't appeasers, maybe others wouldn't have to live in fear, just for working with (or playing with) an Israeli
. Consider the case of Sania Mirza [link via the hyperlinkopotamus at
Discarded Lies]:
Indian female tennis player Sania Mirza, 19, who is ranked 39th in the world, announced that she would not play with Israeli up and coming tennis star Shahar Pe’er in the doubles tournament of the Bangalore Open for fear of violent protests by India’s Islamic community.
I'm not thrilled with her decision, but I certainly understand it.
For an alternative view of the cartoons, by a Muslim, see
Salim Mansur's latest column in the Trono Sun:
[D]ebate is necessary on this subject. Without the freedom to question, affirm, deny, revise or dismiss deeply held beliefs and values, there is only dogma that invariably becomes stale, lifeless and suffocating.
The kind of rage we have seen from some extremists is indicative in part of their incapacity to provide a persuasive argument in defence of their position.
Whatever reasonable arguments they might have for limiting freedom of expression on grounds of religious propriety, these have been shredded by the recourse to violence.
And, as if addressing the United Church of Canada leaders,
What has been lost in the sound and fury of the present controversy is the rather simple question: Is the Muslim world a monolith? If it is not, then surely there exists a diversity of opinions among Muslims on matters sacred and profane.
To consider the Muslim world a monolith — and Muslims in general beholden to the opinion of some religious authority or power-holder — is a greater insult to Islam than any perverse imaginings of cartoonists or the even more perverse reaction of that segment of Muslims so readily driven to rage, be it contrived or genuinely felt.
Mansur concludes,
[T]he recent rage really has little to do with Islam, and much to do with the sociology of parts of the Muslim world, where freedom remains an alien idea and dissent a crime.
What he said. The problem is not that some Muslims are upset with the cartoons; in their minds, the cartoons are blasphemous. Instead, the problem is that some of those who were upset have reacted with violence and threats of violence.
One of the effects of this violence has been that
it has led to the resignation of Italy's Minister for Institutional Reform,
Roberto Calderoli. Regardless of his merits or demerits as a politician, the violence should not be allowed to have this effect.