I don't know all the reasons all Muslims are protesting the 'toons. I'm just saying personally think the cartoons are racist. The folks in the West that are perversely celebrating the effect the cartoons have had on much of the Islamic world -- they're usually fairly racist sorts who think the response by Muslims is silly, hilarious, and indicative of the typical slavering fanaticism so indicative of Muslim subhumans, or something. I don't think anyone on LBO-Talk thinks this way; I'm just talking about the discussion I have seen on some atheism forums where the majority of atheists are American Lib Party/South Park types, the kind who think you just can't ever go too far in bashing Islam. Their bashing usually has strong elements of xenophobia to it that goes above and beyond mere criticism of religion.
I'm a consistent atheist, in that I think the ideas behind all three of the major monotheistic religions are ridiculous - that they're derived from deities, that there's angels and demons, etc. But if someone printed a caricature of a hook-nosed Moses, for example, and the person doing that was from, say, Germany, well, that would smack of pretty callous racism to me. Here we have a Europeans' version of Muhammad, with a massive turban, talking about virgins, a flaming bomb in his head, etc.
My understanding about the protests is that many of them are solidarity-type protests and that the majority of folks haven't seen cartoons of one form or another.
-B.
Thomas Seay wrote:
"I am undecided as to whether I find these cartoons racist, however, my understanding is that the Muslimsprotesting the cartoons are doing so because (A) the cartoons show a depiction of Muhammed and (B) they depict Muhammed in an unfavorable light). In other words, they are not doing it to protest racism (am I wrong about that?)"