As expected, one commenter dropped by to assert that the real reason humorists don't go after Islam is that radical Muslims will kill them if they do. As a longtime humorist for such outlets at National Lampoon and The Onion who has written a great deal of blasphemy against all three of the largely interchangeable monotheist religions, and who has worked with a great number of other humorists over the years, and who has in fact lived in a country with a near-majority Muslim population and who once shared an apartment with a devout Sunni, I can assure this commenter and everyone else that it has never once crossed my mind that I might actually be killed for mocking the Ismaili branch of the global Yahweh/Elohim/Allah cult, and I sincerely doubt that a single American humorist has ever refrained from writing a single line out of concern that he might be killed for it. It's the producers and editors who occasionally lose their nerve, and they generally do so for reasons more prosaic than concern for death. I've had an assigned story killed by the publisher of a major publication simply because he likes to have cocktails with a person targeted for criticism therein.
Having said that, certainly there are Muslims who will actually kill one for expressing one's views, or for one's religion or lack thereof; the ironically-named Theo van Gogh lost his life for pointing out Islam's fundamental flaws too prominently and in too close of association with one of its more prominent and courageous escapees, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Islam is a degenerate meme, and to the extent that it is actually followed, its expression leads to nonsense and persecution. But this is true of Judaism and Christianity as well (as dictated by their actual, recognized texts, and not the soft-serve version that their respective modern leaders are more inclined to peddle), both of which have expressed themselves in serfdom, slavery, and genocide in past centuries and which did so on the unambiguous orders of the Old Testament, which is only safer than the Qu'ran by virtue of most copies existing in Enlightenment-governed lands where God's old commands have been neutered by civil law and reasonable human aspirations. The Enlightenment never took off in the Muslim world; when and if it does, Muslims will become as docile as our Western Christians and Jews, pretending away their deity's more violent exhortations and joining in with the silly ecumenicism by which American Protestants and Catholics, for instance, have given up their old, murderous feuds in recognition that they both believe similarly unlikely things and ought to be concentrating rhetorical fire on those who, by virtue of not believing any such thing, are implicitly insulting them simply by virtue of existing.
You Christians ought to remember how much religion-prompted killing your co-religionists perpetrated against each other and others (particularly from the 15th to 18th centuries) before the concept of pluralism came around out here in the West, and what a useful electoral bloc you have since formed among the U.S. electorate. The information-infused youth of our civilization are not going to be getting any more inclined to believe what a billion illiterate serfs once believed as long as the internet is around to give them easy access to perspective; you will need new coalition members in time, and Islam is spreading quickly. Don't burn your bridges, as theology makes for strange bedfellows, and the religious would recognize this were they not as immune to historical irony and even history itself.
Still, I'll make fun of Islam if that will bring more happiness into this 6,000-year-old world of ours, so overdue for renovation. I read the Koran once in English (I read Arabic script and a few words here and there but not nearly enough to figure out what one illiterate Arab merchant tells those of even lesser intellect that himself). The first sura is called "The Cow." I took like four or five Vicodin each on several subsequent nights in order to plow through the fucking thing back when I was a teenager and had more patience for such things, and even then I couldn't finish the last third because at some point I ran out of Vicodin. Fuck that punk-ass book and its middle school English assignment-level metaphors.
In fact, if you Islam-obsessed conservatives will start giving me page views and buying my books instead of leaving that crucial modern human duty to the liberals and moderates and whatnot (not that they do all that great of a job of this, either), I'll make fun of Islam all the time. I used to write about restaurants and, seriously, women's shoe stores back in the day. I don't give a fuck, yo!
In conclusion, it's cute to see one branch of monotheists going after another branch of monotheists for ascribing to a religion that's used to justify violence, as if the most recent rounds of Balkan wars and Indian Christian anti-Muslim rampages never happened. Also, there was that one time when Christian Europe conquered and colonized almost the entirety of the Islamic world and held it under its control for over a century - you know, that thing which modern conservative Christians are always accusing Muslims of desiring to do to us and purely on the basis of Islam's uniquely aggressive nature, so different from that of precious, precious Christianity.
Actually, here's the real conclusion. I hereby declare atheist jihad on everyone because I'm sick of having to repeatedly point out what should be obvious to any reasonably bright fucking 17-year-old who cares enough about the world to crack open a history book on occasion but which is entirely lost on every one of these monotheists and the Catholics, too. I don't know what atheist jihad entails yet, but I suspect it will involve drinking more coffee, and I've already had like a whole big pot of coffee today, so look out, world!
And here's the even, uh, realer conclusion: religious literalists could always start up their own comedy institutions and make fun of secularism. In fact, they tried this one time. The result was called The 1/2th-Hour News Hour and not even other literalists would watch it. Successful humor requires intelligence and a sense of irony. Meanwhile, I once had a figure in the intelligent design movement call me "Barrett Clown." Because my last name is "Brown" and I am a clown. Brown rhymes with clown!
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