The problem with religion is that people believe it

From the Boston Globe, a paper that went up a tick in my book today.

HINDUS CONSIDER it sacrilegious to eat meat from cows, so when a Danish supermarket ran a sale on beef and veal last fall, Hindus everywhere reacted with outrage. India recalled its ambassador to Copenhagen, and Danish flags were burned in Calcutta, Bombay, and Delhi. A Hindu mob in Sri Lanka severely beat two employees of a Danish-owned firm, and demonstrators in Nepal chanted: ”War on Denmark! Death to Denmark!”In many places, shops selling Dansk china or Lego toys were attacked by rioters, and two Danish embassies were firebombed.
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It didn’t happen, of course. Hindus may consider it odious to use cows as food, but they do not resort to boycotts, threats, and violence when non-Hindus eat hamburger or steak. They do not demand that everyone abide by the strictures of Hinduism and avoid words and deeds that Hindus might find upsetting. The same is true of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons: They don’t lash out in violence when their religious sensibilities are offended. They certainly don’t expect their beliefs to be immune from criticism, mockery, or dissent.

But radical Muslims do.

The article is titled “We Are All Danes Now”, something that’s slightly blasphemous in this country from the statements made in the wake of 9/11 (yeah, I went there; sue me). But the important point is I get their point. I’m not pissed at the reference, it’s actually fitting. Radical Muslims have showed the world that it’s not enough to tolerate them, they demand that you bend to them as well, and that’s a line I will cross. Christianity in this country has demanded for decades that we as a society conform to some outmoded thought pattern, a demand we have vehemently opposed. We should not cave to the same demands simply because Islam is the new media darling.

Read the whole article; there are people trying to change the thought patterns in the MIddle East. But not enough.

There’s oppression and then there’s oppression. Forbidding statements about a religion you don’t even believe in is the worst kind of oppression, and any politician in this or any other country should be ashamed for cow-towing to anyone who says otherwise. Muslims are wrong on this issue the same way Christians are wrong about abortion. This has to stop and stop now. The world has moved beyond the ninth century, so should Islam.