While looking around for comments on Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, I came across this post by one Kamran Haider. It offers quite a different Islamic take on the cartoon controversy than you usually read:
Every now and then someone throws a lit matchstick to the curtain covering our weaknesses and we start dancing around the fire to amuse the whole world….now when someone draws cartoons of the prophet, their idea is not to spread paganism but it is either to express resentment or plain hatred or apparently for the sake of free speech. Our way of reacting to this is normally, rioting, knocking down our own property and killing innocents.
Instead, I want to pose, some different questions to the muslim community. Lets just go back in history and ask ourselves, how did the prophet himself react when people in his time used all means to offend him (facebook didn’t exist back then but if you study history you will find out they used everything that they had at their expense)? What did he do when people threw garbage at him?
If the prophet was alive today and an old lady had thrown garbage at him, what would her fate be at the hands of angry mobs of ‘devout muslims’. Most probably they would storm her house and tear her into pieces. Wait a minute though…would the prophet let them do this? Since he chose to take care of her when she got sick instead of ‘getting offended’ then I am pretty sure he wouldn’t suggest rioting, burning down their own property in anger, killing innocents and mounting an irrational response.
I don’t agree with everything in the essay, but it’s certainly worth reading.
