My Own Private Jihad

If you haven't noticed, there has been quite the brouhaha in the Muslim world of late, all because of a little cartoon published in a Danish newspaper. The story goes that some Danish children's author was writing a book about the Muslim prophet Muhammad, but couldn't find anyone to do any illustrations of him. Seems that Muslim scholars have interpreted their scripture in a way that forbids any pictures of the prophet for fear that one might worship the pictures instead, which would lead of course to idolatry.
Anyway, in a show of free expression, a Danish newspaper named Jyllands-Posten invited drawings of Muhammad and published 12 of them. While some were innocent enough, others were (deliberately) more provocative, including one showing a scowling Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb. Subsequently there have been protests, buildings burned down, people killed, things like that.
A couple of points:
1. Though I can see where the average Muslim might find that cartoon offensive I'm tending to side with the free-expression folks on this one. I am exceedingly grateful to live in a society that lets me worship and say pretty much what I want to. However, the price of that is that everyone else gets to worship and say what they want as well, even when I don't agree with them. I wouldn't want to live in a society that forced Christianity on everyone any more than I would want to live in a society that forced everyone into Islam. There has been a call (mostly in Europe) for new censorship guidelines to confront Islamophobia (not my word, but a fun one nonetheless). The Stranger, a alternative newspaper out of Seattle, published this article, which also contains the offending cartoon. It is a bit disturbing, but explains the politics of the whole deal better than I could. Fortunately, in this country, nobody in the media ever makes fun of Christianity, so I think I'm safe. However, if they ever did, I think my faith would be strong enough to carry me through.
2. It has been interesting to see protests with large groups of people carrying signs that say "Down with Denmark". While it is nice to see a break from all those "Death to America" signs, I do feel sorry for little Denmark. Its hard to think of a more innocuous country (kudos to their PM for not apologizing to the extremists, by the way). Apparently their country has taken a bit of an economic hit since many Middle Eastern countries have boycotted their products. I guess I didn't realize that Denmark actually had that many products. However, here is a common scene played out at breakfast tables across Saudi Arabia:

Rasheed: "Son, what would you like for breakfast?"
Abu: "Could I have a cheese Danish, papa?"
Rasheed: "No Abu, you will not eat the breakfast pastry of the infidels!"
Abu: "Yes, Papa." (Pulls out book and starts to read.)
Rasheed (furious): "Abu! Is that the works of Hans Christian Andersen?"
Abu (starts to cry): "But Papa, I love Thumbelina."
As Rasheed storms off stage right, Abu bows his head in shame as the curtain closes. End scene.