Freedom vs. outrage

I recently got an email regarding the Muslim rioting in response to the cartoons depicting Mohammed as a terrorist. The writer asked my thoughts on why comparable depictions of Christ, or people like Kanye West comparing themselves to Christ, and the reactions of Christians are not cited in the media as being peaceful as opposed to the violence we are seeing now from Muslims, and also why images offensive to Christians are so tolerated in the first place. He claimed an NPR reporter had seemed to "condone" the rioting. I thought I'd publish some of my response here, as I hadn't really explored my thoughts on the subject before in writing. Ellipses signify an edit. This exchange happened last week, and his email was the first I'd heard of these events.

...I didn't hear the show you describe on NPR,
but the way you put it it sounds like you are
equating understanding with condoning.  This is
a common smear used by the right because it makes
them look uncompromising.  However, none but the
most radical leftist will say the violence being
perpetrated is justified and "right", i.e. they
condone it.  What many Democrats have said since
9/11 is that in order to fight the radical
elements of Islam (which are, as you note, a
small portion of all Muslims), we have to
understand how they think, what they want, and
what they are doing to achieve it.  If we
understand their tactics, we can develop counter-
tactics (some that do not involve violence, and
others that do-almost no one voted against the
invasion of Afghanistan, for example).  The major
critique of the Bush administration is that they
didn't bother to understand the enemy before they
began the attack, and they didn't pursue the non-
violent measures the way they should have.  Then
they tried to play catch up when things went south,
which predictably enough is not as effective and it
may be too late, in any case.

If you truly believe no one in the media is
pointing out some Muslims commonly react to outrage
with violence, you don't consume much media.  That
viewpoint is never more than a click away if that's
what you want to hear.  One reason it's not more
widespread is that it can be misused by people with
agendas to foment racism and violence here at home. 
For an example, see Hotel Rwanda.  When people with
a "public voice", as you put it, start putting
their own "people" above another "people", it has
in the past led to disaster, so it is avoided.... 

You identify the cover photo [of Kanye West on the
cover of Rolling Stone-ed.] as a satire of Jesus...
I'm not sure it meets the definition of satire,
since that implies an attack.  It sounds more like
West has a messiah complex and wants to be compared
to Jesus.  This may be silly and distasteful, but
why would he want to be identified with a figure he
didn't respect?  Does he equate his behavior to
Jesus's behavior, or just his suffering?...If we
were to agree showing disrespect to Jesus was
unacceptable, what should we do about it?  Lock up
the people making the depictions?  Who decides
what's disrespectful?  This is why we live under
separation of church and state.  The church gets to
decide what's disrespectful, and the state gets to
lock people up.  But one doesn't get to tell the
other what to do, and that allows us freedom of
religion.  Different churches find different things
disrespectful, but we all live together in relative
peace.

...For as long as there are people willing to be
offended by something, there will be people who
want to offend them, and some of what they do will
qualify as art, even to you and me.  But if [some]
hypothetical Christians took to throwing bombs at
Rolling Stone headquarters, you can bet it would
make the news, and some reporters would make it
their business to understand what these people
wanted and tell the rest of the world.  Pundits
would attack and defend them, just like they do
the Muslims....

Christians haven't always persecuted Muslims,
and Muslims haven't always persecuted Christians
...There have been periods of peace and periods
of war, not just because of religion either.  But
if you want to say Christians are inherently less
bloodthirsty than Muslims because of their
religion, you're ignoring your history.  The
difference between them stems from the fact that
the vast majority of Christian leaders decided to
ignore the justifications in the Bible for
violence (and they're there) and instead to preach
and teach the parts of the Bible that focus on
forgiveness and salvation.  The Muslim clergy have
not yet reached that point [of minimizing the
justification for violence-ed.], although they
were moving in that direction until the rise of
Wahhabism in the last century.

It may just be a matter of time until they catch
up in that respect, or they may regress.  We had
several hundred years' head start on them,
remember.  The world's a different place, and if
terrorism had been possible when the Inquisition
was going on, who's to say it wouldn't have spread
to England and France?  We're not as different as
we may seem based on the fanatics....