The Face of Mohammed is in the Eye of the Beholder

Muslims are enraged that a Danish cartoonist depicted their prophet with a lighted bomb in his turban. Clerics have incited Muslims to violence and even called for the murder of the apostates who created and published this cartoon.

Muslims should be angry. Let's examine why.

When many people hear the word Muslim they immediately think of a crazed, intolerant, murderous fanatic wearing a bomb, ready to send himself and unbelievers to the Otherworld. Where did people learn to associate Muslims with bombings and murder? Could this learning come from observing Al-Jazeera broadcasts of kidnappings, beheadings and bombings commited by Muslims? Could the televised images of hate-filled Muslim mobs burning flags and chanting death to everyone leave a lasting image of Muslims as savages? Could the lack of condemnation by the vast majority of "peaceful Muslims" be responsible for a negative image of Muslims?

In order for a cartoon to be effective, the subject must be immediately recognizable to an average viewer. The Danish cartoon shows a bearded, glaring-eyed man wearing a turban with a lighted bomb in it. I would suspect most Westerners saw the archetypical Islamofascist in the cartoon. Only Muslims saw the face of Mohammed and declared the cartoon an insult on all of Islam. This association is disturbing.

How many Germans see a cartoon of Hitler goose-stepping about in a swastika emblazoned helmet and declare the image insulting all Germans and Christianity? I would venture that few would make a personal association. And fewer still would feel obliged to join a mob to burn a flag of the offending nationality of the cartoonist. No pastor would offer a million deutschmark bounty for the head of the cartoonist.

Muslims should be angry...at the murderers and hate-mongers in their midst who use Islam to further their personal quest for power and domination thereby creating the cartoon image. Muslims must demonstrate that they are not the archetype depicted in the cartoon by cleansing the terrorists from their culture. Muslim's fight is with Muslims, not other cultures. Only Muslims can purge the savages from their midst and change their image. Otherwise the cartoon image becomes the image of all Muslims.

Nope. That ain't the face of Mohammed. But I've seen that face a thousand times urging an impressionable young Arab man to blow me up because I am from a different culture. The Bodb would be inspired by the blood sacrifice. Some things just never change.