@Sean – It’s cold here in Nebraska and we have snow. So I take my dog out the other night to take a Muhammad and the snow has thawed and re-froze several times over the last few days and has a thick crust on top. Anyway, my dog is taking a Muhammad right… and it rolls down the hill on the hard snow. She looks at it running away from her and is a little startled so she walks away and continues. It again rolls away so she looks up at me with a look saying, “Maybe I should chew my food a little better.”
Oh Muhammad rolling down a hill sure is funny.

So, the idol was not given the Prophet’s (blessed be his name) name, it was given the name of a small child whose Satanic, parents had the effrontery to give their putrid discharge the Most Holy Name of The Prophet (blessed be his name).

Unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam forbids any graphic representation of the Prophet (blessed be his name). The cartoon uproar in (some Scandinavian country) demonstrated this rather graphically (sorry). Jews name their kids Moses, Isaac, etc. and Christians name their progeny Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Islamic parents name their sons Muhammad (blessed be his name) but Somali mobs don’t riot and insist that mom and pop be executed as was the case with Ms. Gibbons.

We in the west are eager to discover some kind of moderate Islam to which we can appeal when situations such as this arise. It is a vain effort. You might as profitably seek Pat Robertson’s moderation on the issue of abortion. But Robertson is an American Christian and his creed and his nation’s constitution have been around long enough for him to realize the benefits to be gained by separating civil from ecclesiastical authority. Nowhere has Islam reached that stage.

Ancient Israelites slaughtered their enemies but never tried to convert them. Medieval Christians slaughtered their enemies only when attempts at conversion failed. In the west, both creeds have accommodated themselves to secular governance of secular affairs. Islam has not. In the Christian year 2007 There does not exist anywhere on the globe any country with a Muslim majority that can be called “democratic” in any sense of the term.

In the past 200 years or so the west has done away with idiotic notions of governance such as the divine right of kings, superiority of race and class enmity. Race and class, being temporal designations, were quickly (but savagely) done away with. As a result we live in world more focused on trade and human needs than theology.

Islam alone remains aloof.

Violently so.

No one requires that Islam abandon its theology, merely its politics. No one required that Germans abandon their racism nor Russians their Marxism nor the Japanese their devotion to their emperor. When Islam is prepared to live in a secular world it will be tolerable.

But that cannot happen because Islam insists that the temporal bow to THEIR theology. Islam is, therefore, a threat to the good order of human affairs and must be resisted at all turns. The Idea of the west has overcome all manner of obstacles because it is consistent with human nature. When Islam concedes temporal authority to temporal institutions it will be tolerable to human life.

Until them, we must regard Islam as a threat no less serious than Nazism or Communism. Nor should our efforts be any less rigorous.