You wouldn’t say that about Mohammed!

I’ve noticed something strange coming from the mouths of theists, especially those of a christian bent, recently.

Whenever there appears to be something that they take exception to, because it either ridicules their religion, or just represents a facet of it that they just don’t want to talk about, or otherwise has some connection with their religion, they say something like this:

You wouldn’t say this about Mohammed!

Now, why is that?

It seems to me that these theists see some benefit in the threat of extremism; they see that it does make some people turn around and stop themselves, censor themselves for fear of retribution. But the other thing that I see is that they are either unwilling or unable to carry out this threat themselves; they only want to benefit from the fear of extremism, without even having to make any actual threat.

Taking, for example, the recent chocolate Jesus episode: a spokesperson for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (ha!) said:

They would never dare do something similar with… the Prophet Mohammed naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan.
The Independent

See what I mean? And this person has a point: most people wouldn’t dare do as they suggest, because muslims are not just capable, but willing of enacting some kind of ‘retribution’ for the imagined insult, if not happily.

The main point of these sorts of comments appears to be a call for ‘respect’ for their beliefs, which can be suitably rejected when we have the prime example of these people claiming that they should be allowed to discriminate against homosexuals because it’s their tradition, or their scripture tells them, to do so. Their ‘beliefs’ are not due respect — they’re due the perfectly justified ridicule they receive.

Christians are, in general, not willing to go to the extremes that muslims are — they’ll just intimate that there might be consequences if the object of their offense isn’t eradicated, and often this is enough to get their way. And, of course, this is a sham.

In essence, what they are doing here is riding on extremism’s coat-tales, reaping the benefit of the threat (and sometimes the reality) without actually having to go to the god-awful (pun intended) lengths of threatening or carrying out the shameless, bigotted acts that religious extremists are now infamous for.

If we were to ignore these protestations, what would happen? One possibility is that they would be forced either to put up, or to STFU.

Violence isn’t really an option in places like North America or Western Europe — this would force governments to respond in the same TWAT way that they have with islam. And, knowing their propensity for mouthing off about anything and everything, regardless of it being true or not, the possibility of them shutting up is, frankly, unlikely.

So, I invite all free-speech advocates to continue to rip the piss: draw those cartoons, mould those sculptures, paint those murals, write those articles that point out the ridiculousness of their religions’ bigotted backgrounds and insanity of their dogmas. If they choose to use violence to fight for their ‘right’ not to be offended, then I predict that they’re would be, very quickly, on the losing side.

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