Gosh. Can’t they take a joke?

  • I’ve been not­ing the slowly esca­lat­ing story of Mus­lims who are infu­ri­ated by anti-Muslim car­toons in a Dan­ish news­pa­per. Pre­dictably, fun­da­men­tal­ist Mus­lims were not amused (are they ever amused?) by these car­toons that made fun of the prophet Mohammed. And when I say “not amused,” I mean as in a “burning-down-the-embassy” lack of amuse­ment.

    It was a cul­ture clash that was bound to hap­pen. North­ern Europe has been on the fore­front of a Euro­pean cri­sis in the mak­ing. When Theo van Gogh was mur­dered in Hol­land by a Mus­lim for mak­ing a movie crit­i­cal of the Mus­lims, the entire coun­try erupted in out­rage. They wanted redress. They wanted action. I haven’t heard any­thing since their attempt to enforce cul­tural para­me­ters, but I assume they were forced to back down and just keep up the only pol­icy that Europe seems capa­ble of these days — appease­ment. Yep, good idea, guys. It’s doing won­ders for you in Iran.

    Well, I don’t know about the rest of the gen­tle Dan­ish folk, but appar­ently there were some car­toon­ists that thought it was all baloney and decided to do what car­toon­ists do: blow off a lit­tle steam with a pen and ink. Are the car­toons that bad? Not to me. (Go here and scroll down to see all twelve.) But they’re enough that Mus­lims all over Europe and the Mid­dle East have been burn­ing flags and effi­gies and have posted a ran­som for killing the cartoonists.

    This will likely end with the entire con­ti­nent of Europe kiss­ing back­side, puck­er­ing up pret­tily with lots of the right lan­guage about how impor­tant it is not to be insen­si­tive. Mustn’t offend the great and lov­ing peo­ples who made jihad a house­hold word. Much bet­ter — much more sophis­ti­cated and Con­ti­nen­tal — to echo their out­rage, pre­tend mighty dis­may that car­toon­ists would ever, ever be so crass as to think that the founder of their faith could be made the butt of jokes.

    And mean­while, back in these befud­dled states, Chris­tians are won­der­ing how much more clear the double-standard could pos­si­bly get. We have been treated to every kind of ver­bal abuse and given the hell­fire treat­ment when we don’t sit still for it. We reg­u­larly see Chris­tians held up to ridicule as dan­ger­ous fools and thick-headed hyp­ocrites (most recently in that paragon of virtue “Broke­back Moun­tain,” appar­ently). We are expected to con­sider our reli­gion too offen­sive, tainted and non-inclusive to be allowed to be expressed in school­rooms, cour­t­houses or other pub­lic places. The words “under God” are out of the pledge of alle­giance and the des­ig­na­tions BC and AD — before and after Christ — to des­ig­nate the eras of time are increas­ingly replaced with BCE (Before the Com­mon Era) and CE (Com­mon Era). We’ve had the One we esteem as the Son of God treated with con­tempt, defiled, reduced to a curse. We’ve been expected to shut up and be good sports when He is mocked again, scourged again — mer­ci­lessly and end­lessly. We’ve had “The Temp­ta­tion of Christ” on the screen, and we’ll have “The daVinci Code.” Appar­ently, Brit­ney Spears is going to play a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian on “Will and Grace” who hosts a cook­ing show called Cruci-fixins. An enter­tain­ment indus­try and an art world that are almost bereft of a sin­gle orig­i­nal idea can only bor­row the strength and power of the Gospel truth to hide their bar­ren­ness. They are will­ing to sac­ri­fice the faith that built our civ­i­liza­tion in the hopes of get­ting just one good belly laugh.

    Our lit­tle voice cry­ing “Foul!” isn’t likely to be heard. I’m wait­ing for the next pre­dictable vol­ley — hear­ing Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists com­pared to rad­i­cal Islamists, as if we burn down build­ings and riot in the streets all the time. It’s a pen­du­lum that only seems to swing one way. Too bad that over­bal­ances the whole clock, because I’ve been won­der­ing what time it is.

    Other (and bet­ter) takes on all this over at Get Reli­gion and OrthodoxyToday.org


    Related posts:

    1. Is Hol­ly­wood “a very Chris­t­ian town?”

    February 4th, 2006 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Jakob Smith 02.04.2006

    Tulips and wooden shoes, that’s the Dutch. In Den­mark we are more into mar­i­nated heer­ings and Lego or some­thing like that. :-)

  • Grace

    Jakob,
    Sooo sorry. Actu­ally, when I came across some­one talk­ing about the flag of Den­mark, I real­ized I had goofed and just deleted out the whole ref­er­ence. Boy, no won­der the UN kicked back my job application.

    Mar­i­nated her­rings, eh? Yuk. But I assume I got the “gen­tle folk” part right?

  • Jakob Smith

    Yeah, mar­i­nated heer­ings with onion slices on a good piece of rye­bread and a schnaps, then you’re in Denmark.

    Gen­tle? Well, I hope so :-)

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