I think the reason the eye gets cast on Islam in particular is that Islam seems to expect to be exempt from satire and parody. Every group has been mocked: to insult or for humour or with an ideological motive. Christians, especially cartoons with paedophile priests; Jewish people in controversial images about Israel-Palestine or cartoons published by or in support of the Nazis, Communists in Russia or contemporary enemies like Iran; women demanding the right to vote were ridiculed in cartoons; there's a history of racist depictions of black people in cartoons for hundreds of years.
Some of this might be a joke, or to push a ideological agenda, or just plain mean, and much of it may be wrong or tasteless, but no group says, "You can't do this to us." They may be offended, or angry, and demand it be censored. But only Islam says, "You can't do this to us." This isn't to say that Islam is therefore the problem, however. I just mean to explain why Islam is the focus in these incidents.
I think the biggest problem is that people
listen to that edict. It's not controversial for me to draw a paedophile priest joke. People will laugh, or roll their eyes. But if I draw a guy with a turban and dynamite strapped to his chest, it's all, "OMG IS THIS OKAY?!" Forget about the Islamic world's reaction to my drawing: that's a reaction produced by our own media.
I agree that Islam isn't the problem, but I understand why it is seen as exceptional in this case, and others like it (e.g.: the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons in 2005, and Charlie Hebdo was firebombed in 2011 before this). The only cure for that is to ignore the claim that it cannot be done, until doing it is not controversial in Western media anymore (viz., that it draws the same amount of press coverage as any other critical cartoon; what's the last objectionable cartoon not related to Islam that made it into the news?).[DOUBLEPOST=1420664361,1420664315][/DOUBLEPOST]
The IRA is such an interesting example of religious terrorism. The fact that it feels different is really just our own racist preconceptions. No offense intended by that. None of us easily consider that anyone in the IRA could be motivated by Catholicism, because their actions so clearly go against the primary teachings of the religion. And most of us recognize that the actions are much more motivated by political ideologies and feelings of historical oppression etc.. What's so interesting is that the exact same template could be directly overlaid on many muslim terrorists, yet we choose to see them in such a different light.
This is well said.
