Iran's Khameni offers his opinion:
In Tehran, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei compared the pope's remarks to caricatures published in a Danish newspaper last year deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed. The cartoons set off deadly protests in the Muslim world.
"The issue of insulting cartoons and remarks of some politicians about Islam are different links in the conspiracy of the crusaders and the pope's remarks are the latest links in this," Khamenei said.
Truly, the Pope's remarks and the cartoon controversy are pretty similar. Nutballs react with violence and rage to that which should be ordinary--the free expression of the banal or the obvious. Oh, and many in the West shrink from their brave talk of "speaking truth to power" when they deliberately insult Christianity and instead call for apologies and self-censorship. Speaking truth to power is one thing, "speaking truth to those who will stab you twenty times or behead you" is another.
And the idea that there is a conspiracy against Islam is bizarre. It they didn't have oil and crazed killers pouring out of their soil, we wouldn't even listen to them let alone conspire against them. What do they have to offer us other than oil? If we didn't need their oil we'd wall them off to keep out the crazed killers and let them enjoy their pure poverty in isolation. And one day, we won't need their oil. The conspiracy talk will really take off when we won't buy their oil for five dollars a barrel. But we won't care, either.
I may not think taxpayers should fund stupid so-called art, but I hardly think it should be censored by the government. Nor do I think we should round up the so-called artists and attack or kill them. Just ignore them, I say, and good luck getting somebody to subsidize your crap. They'll be working for Student Painters faster than you can say your rent is overdue.
It is a mistake to apologize for any of this. Apologies don't calm the nutballs and worse, apologies give ordinary Moslems the idea that they really were insulted. This is all one more link in this sorry state of affairs.
