You might recollect the Danish cartoons that got the jihadists all crazy, and sparked a world-wide “Lego-burning” phenomenon. Well, I’m publishing them out of principle.

America has self-censored itself plenty, along with the rest of the world, because members of Islam are offended by cartoons. Muslims burn American and Israeli flags, and extremists incite violence and terror on the civilized world, yet the Islamic world takes offense when a Danish cartoonist draws their Prophet. They should take more offense when a suicide bomber blows himself up in the name of their religion, their prophet, and their Allah.

Can anything even come remotely close to this preposterous? I don’t mean to bash Islam–though I guess, actually, yes I do mean to bash Islam, in a sense. I mean to bash Islamism, which is the attempt by Orthodox Muslims and radicals to bring about a global Caliphate.

I’m not big on organized religion in the first place. Radical Christians scare me. There are plenty of moderate Christians, though, who can shrug off any satire of their religion. They may not like it, but they can take it with a grain of salt.

They aren’t too concerned that Jesus will be offended, using the logic that he is probably above such things, you know, being a divine entity and all….

Can’t You Take a Joke?

Muslims are so prickly when it comes to Muhammad that they threatened to behead a school teacher when she lets her class name a Teddy Bear after him. Half the Muslim world is named Muhammad but if you name a toy after the Prophet, that is obviously a crime against Allah, and punishable by lashings, imprisonment, and death.

Like Jesus, I’m pretty sure the Prophet himself wouldn’t have been too concerned with a stuffed animal sharing his name. He might have even thought of it as cute. What’s cuter than a Teddy Bear named after a Prophet? And after all, when Mr. Muhammad showed up on the Mesopotamian scene he came as a reformer.

Muslims today seem to forget this, using the inherent Orthodoxy of Islam, and the Prophet’s writings as a means to subjugate the masses, elicit violence, and justify all sorts of violence against women, members of other faiths, and innocents across the globe. You can even use the Koran to justify “wiping Israel off the map” if you try hard enough.

This is not to say that all Muslims are bad. Far from it. Many are educated and moderate.

But “many” here equates to a minority–at least in terms of the ripple effect that Islamism is having on the world, if not in actual numbers. Moderation is not accepted in this religion. Adherence to extremism, salafism, and blind orthodoxy are the status quo. Perhaps this isn’t the religion itself; perhaps Islam is undergoing its own Dark Ages.

Nevertheless, like the Catholic Crusades, the Islamism of today seeks to bring about the institution of Sharia, or Islamic Law, across the globe.

Defining Radicalism.

Also, it’s important at this point to define radicalism. In my opinion, it doesn’t take a suicide bomber or an abortion clinic bomber or a fighter in a holy war to qualify as a radical, though by all means that is what they are.

When a religion becomes also the rule of law, that’s radical. When Church and State are no longer separate–this is, to me, radical. Forcing your religion on someone else through legal means is radical. Asking for Sharia to be instituted in Great Britain is radical.

The desire to punish someone for not adhering to a particular set of beliefs is radical. This applies to non-religious ideologies as well. Communism, fascism–these are political religions. They are radical because they are forced on others, and once they’re in place, they’re final. No elections. No questions.

The terrorists are forcing their belief on the world by blowing it up one plane, one bus, one mosque at a time. Many Muslims don’t believe in this, but still believe Islam should have a seat at the heart of government, and that Islamic law should be practiced to the letter. This is still radical, though it is less of a violent sort of radicalism.

Nevertheless, in its own way this sort of mild radical thought is just as dangerous, or more so, than that wild, burning fanaticism of the jihadists. It is more innocuous; it permeates whole cultures almost parasitically. And the main problem with this dormant radicalism is what it breeds: amidst all the peaceful adherents, emerge violent fanatics.

In France a whole generation of devout but peaceful Muslims emigrated from Algeria and attempted to incorporate their lives and cultures with France’s less-than-welcoming society. They were unsuccessful, and now their children have grown up as second-class citizens and are becoming far more fanatical than their parents. The nature of Islam itself encourages this.

Any religion has this potential, but Islam especially because it demands Orthodoxy and forbids spiritual evolution.

The Global Caliphate.

Imagine an Islamic Earth where Sharia was the rule of law. All the women veiled, garbed head to toe, modest and subservient. Thieves hands chopped off for stealing. Honor killings. Women executed for being too revealing or for being raped, while the man who raped them goes unpunished.

Somehow, I think this is not what was intended by Muhammad. He banned many of the things that are still practiced in ignorant, medieval Middle-East States today.

Sadly, though, written Holy Texts all too often lead to power. Organized religion inevitably has to choose at some point whether it will be an institution of love and unity, or an institution of control. The Catholic Church has wrestled with this for centuries.

Islam is wrestling with it now–and the love and unity side is losing to the fanatics. The War on Terror is a war on Radical Islamism, at least in its current form. That may not be the politically correct thing to say or to call it, but it is the truth. The radicals are almost correct when they say America and Israel are fighting against Islam.

We are fighting against Islamism.

The civilized world must, on all fronts both militarily and culturally, stand up to the forces of ignorance, darkness, and despair. A world of Sharia would be a world of institutionalized terror; a world where religious fanaticism would replace the power of reason and dignity.

Europe is losing the cultural war, as more and more radical Muslims populate its cities, railing against the very places that offer them refuge, calling time and again for their host nations to tolerate their extremism, while they make no effort to tolerate the Europeans themselves.

The Danish cartoons are testament to this hypocrisy.

Of course, to be fair, I think the Europeans could be more welcoming. It’s difficult for immigrants to integrate into European society, and that does nothing but exacerbate the problem.

Dear Radicals….

I have only this to say to the Extremists of the world:

Be as barbaric as you like in your own countries. Someday you will answer for it. Someday the voice of reason and the power of human decency will come for a reckoning, and your religion will be retaken by the moderates. Someday, Islam may be able to actually be called a religion of peace, though that day may appear a long way off.

To the Radicals, Terrorists, Salafists, and Apologists,

We believe in the Freedom of Speech, a powerful and (some say) God-given right. This extends to any subject, any race or creed or people. This includes Muslims and their Prophet, who we will lambaste as mercilessly as we lambaste our Presidents, religious figures, and yes, Jesus and his followers, too. We won’t incite violence, because that stumbles across the line of free speech and into a call to action which could result in death.

If you don’t like it, go back to your dictators and oppressive regimes. Here you may get jibed in a cartoon, or railed against in a blog, but at least you’ll be allowed to live however you choose. You can follow Islam however you want and we will respect that right, whether or not we agree with your beliefs.

The only thing you can’t do is break the law – and that includes suicide bombing innocent people, or calling for the murder of a cartoonist. If you want to spoof us in a cartoon, though, go for it. Just respect that we can do it back. If you want to boycott Legos, that’s great! I’ll still buy them. I enjoy Lego wars.

The Cartoons.

If you enjoyed these cartoons, you should check out South Park’s “Cartoon Wars” for a really brilliant, satiric look at censorship. Since these episodes are actually censored due to the South Park creators’ insistence on depicting Muhammad, they are especially pertinent. It’s funny and thought-provoking all at once, which is what’s so enjoyable about the show. South Park is truly a brilliant comedy, producing some of the crudest yet most intelligent satire of the day, and through a relatively conservative lens.

(The rest of the Danish cartoons can be viewed by clicking here…)

Kain's major subjects of focus at NeoConstant are international strategy; support of Israel; the failure of the international community to stop genocide; the spread of American power and democracy; historical analysis; and current events both domestically and abroad. He writes here, Newsvine and his blog, IndiePundit.