Just Shut Up

Think these guys are singing the theme song to Duck Tales? No, I don't believe they are, either.

I'm going to make a very strange and probably very dangerous connection here. Yet it's in my mind, I need some space to flex it.

The world wide response to the Muslim violence over the Danish cartoons defacing Muhammad are tantamount to the pacifism expressed by Chamberlain and the rest of Europe in the face of Hilter's war machine as it swept into Poland. Europe's inability to check Hitler led to annihilation of millions (despite what Tehran says). I believe we have as much to fear of the world's inability to check the fundamentalist/extremist reaction by Muslims - if only ideologically.

Those practicing Islam have every right to demand respect be shown to their religion. It is theirs to demand. The cartoons (which I admittedly have not seen yet have heard described) were in bad taste. I think it is true that America and the West are very desensitized to attacks on religion (and there attacks). I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing we are so numb to it, but it is there. If nothing else, those of the Muslim faith should have been united in a calm reflection about how apart they are from society.

Oh, but they have.

They've done it with rocks, protests, and fire. A baptism by fire is one in which ignorant eyes are awakened unto the truth by force and trial. I believe the world is beginning to experience such a baptism by fire. Not from Islam (what we are lead to believe as the real faith of Islam) or from Muhammad. Rather, from this sense of free reign given to every facet of Islam, including if not especially the radical sects. The world saw havoc (a bit, or a lot, depending on perspective) when the Bush chariot was given no hindrance. I think it not a stretch of the imagination that as Islam is being virtually bowed to by the media and even governments, it too shall reek some havoc.

Given free reign, any religion will fall off the edge of reason and humanity (I know the irony of using such a word). The varieties of paganism experienced such throughout the world's history. As has Christianity and Islam. Yet while the world seems to have a strict hold on Christianity (in professing ideology, at least), Islam has been left free (with admitted pockets of needed intolerance in Britain and unusual intolerance in France).

Every government has the right to rule its people as it wishes. Hopefully by the will of the people too, but, "Hey, can't promise that." What no government has the right to do is exert it's will upon another's without consequence. Indeed, a condemnation of the Bush administration. Yet also a condemnation of what so many of the states of Islam are clamoring for. They demand nothing of their religion be desecrated. And, I don't know, I rather get the sense that they'll kill to ensure the demand is met. Or, at least, they'll burn stuff.

Those pyromaniacs.

This all weirds me out greatly. About as much as the actions of President Bush.

I realise that moderate Muslims (seeing a link to moderate Christians?) condemn the violence spurred by the cartoons as much as the cartoons themselves; as much as they even condemn the acts of terrorism in their god's name. Thank God for them. Yet it is not the Moderates that are marching, some in the millions, and instigating violence. It is the poor, the disenfranchised, those so easily manipulated for in entire breadth of history. I really have not a doubt that all of the rage in the Muslim world is playing right into the hands of those who would gladly see the West go up in flame.

Visions of Dune and flame keep running through my head.

I'm not scared of a Muslim world. I am afraid of a Muslim world birthed through fire.

Talk, peace, dialogue - a nuclear treaty with Tehran.

Please, talk.