Pope Benedict: The New Rushdie!

So now the pope's gotten a death sentence. Sheikh Abubukar Hassan Malin, a hardline cleric in Somalia's Islamic movement has decided that the Pope's gotta go for his quotation of a 14th century Byzantine Emperor. I wasn't going to write about this; it's really quite a tiring thing to work through all of the incidences where the self-described 'religion of peace' makes completely insane moves that reinforce its image as a vicious and intolerant religion of jihad and oppression.

And I mean intolerant in a way that us in the West aren't used to, because yeah, you know how relatively accepting of gay rights and women's rights we are. There's something about affirmative action too. Oh yeah, and we generally like to let people worship however they want to, or not at all if that's their thing. Or um, we have a rule of law relatively free of religious influence. Blah blah blah. Or yeah, remember how willing we are to ignore the flaws of others, as long as the others will accept us and like us. And find us to be non-threatening. Oh right, there's something about free speech that we've all kind of accepted, you know how you can generally say whatever you want publicly, and maybe people don't agree, or maybe they respond aggressively with other words or whatever.

Oh wait, I should stop. It's no use trying to position this superficial, materialistic, individualistic society as somehow morally superior to anybody else (Shhhhhh, Rocketman, you probably shouldn't talk so loud, maybe there's someone listening who wants to behead you), because as we all now know from our postmodern, nihilistic, enlightened perch condescending upon anybody else who doesn't agree, all morality is subjective and equivalent.

And this polite fiction goes on and on and on, and it's great. Everything's great, we're all getting along, and WHAMMO!! The Pope goes and turns off the music at the party and tries to pick a fight. Way to go you Papal maniac!! Why did you have to go and tell Jihad Johnny that he's wearing an ugly sweater? You know he's all coked up and looking for a fight. See look, he's just phoned all his buddies, and they're just a few church-torchings away from coming down to kick all of our asses! Why can't you just shut up for once and keep your opinions to yourself?

Funny how the West can tolerate "The Piss Christ" without getting all freaky, eh?