Blasphemy Friday: Danish newspaper apologizes for printing Muhammad cartoons

Hold onto your hats, folks, this week’s Blasphemy Friday is a doozy. Five years after the publication of the infamous cartoons lampooning the “prophet” Muhammad, sparking deadly overreactions from European Muslims, Politiken (one of the papers that printed the original cartoons) has officially apologized (see video below) for publishing the cartoons and offending Muslims (read: the paper has given in after 5 years of intimidation and bullying). Now, don’t misunderstand me here. I’m all for people not dying, but these are lives that should be saved by radical Muslims ceasing their childish antics, not by a legitimate newspaper appeasing reactionaries.

In demanding that their ideas be immunized from criticism not by their own merit, but by censorship, Muslims have simultaneously become the screaming toddler who throws a fit whenever she doesn’t get her way and the schoolyard bully who fails so utterly at social negotiation and discussion that his only tool for social interaction is the threat of violence. Politiken has given in to the screaming, spoiled brat that is Islam. It has surrendered its lunch money to this bully on the playground in the naïve hope that this act will in any way deter the bully from future attempts at coercion. Not only will this ultimately be ineffective, it gives an unwarranted air of legitimacy to enemies of free expression. It’s positive reinforcement for undesirable behavior; it’s an undeserved ego boost for the bully.

It seems most people in the West cannot decide which outcome they fear more: deadly Muslim overreactions to blasphemous speech and ideas (the bully) or being labeled a racist for recognizing that this fear is legitimate (the brat). It is time we recognized that it is patently absurd for most of the Western world to censor itself for fear of agitating Muslims. If everyone else can learn to play nice in a world of free speech and expression, Muslims should do the same.

Here is the bottom line: everyone should have the freedom to believe the ramblings of whichever obsolete lunatic they choose (freedom of religion). However, by trying to limit the freedom of others by forcing them under threat of violence to conform to its ideals (threatening and carrying out acts of violence when a newspaper publishes cartoons satirizing a holy prophet), Islam has lost all claims to intellectual legitimacy, and Muslims have no right to assign the banner of “racist” to the person who refuses to give undue respect to a bully or a brat.