I must offer a heaping helping of praise to the folks at Wikipedia, for refusing to bow to pressure from easily-offended Muslims to remove images of their religious figure “the Prophet Mohammed”. It takes a decent pair of stones to stand up to a group not exactly known for its kind and infinite patience and its strict adherence to peace and love.

Still, as I read the article from the Guardian, I have to roll my eyes in astonishment. There really are two problems here that seriously bug me. Yes, I am about to make generalizations, which I openly acknowledge. There are exceptions to almost anything, and that’s just as true here. Having said that, there are two real problems at work here:

• Muslims, whose root religion preaches kindness, peace, and love (just like Christianity does — look how well that worked as you look over the charming chronicles of the Crusades), and encourages its practitioners to be strong-willed, immune to all criticism and temptation, seem to get really fucking whiny whenever some outsider (or even a Muslim) tosses up a picture of their beloved spiritual leader. Wanting to prevent the images from being used as “objects of worship?” Isn’t that just a little bit hypocritical? Aren’t these people supposed to be strong enough to not do things they’re told are wrong? Don’t smirk too much, Catholics — once you get your “priests who still molest children” count down to zero, then you can start gloating, but not a moment before.
• People get way too damned offended. You know what happens when something offends me? I either avoid it, or I post here to bitch about it. If I say something here that offends you, I’ll cheerfully point out the millions of other web sites you can go visit, and give a friendly wave as you leave. I’ve never understood the meddling that “offense” causes. Change the channel (or, go out on a limb and turn off the fucking TV) if a word offends you, or you see a bare breast that offends you, or your children start asking “offensive” questions like “where do babies come from, mommy?” because of something they saw. You have no right whatsoever to expect the rest of the world to adapt to your whimpy, sheltered, and fragile belief system.

As much as I hate those stupid “yeah! What he said!” style e-mails that get forwarded on and on and on all the time, one that was circulated a few years back that argued “you do not have the right not to be offended” had a few good ideas. Of course that little “meme” was rife with hatred and bigotry of its own (it was of the “if you come to America, learn to speak English!” variety), but the core notion that you are not endowed with a special right to live in a world completely devoid of things that upset you rings true.

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