A good friend of mine, Arman, sent me this in an email. I post it not as endorsement, but as food for thought.
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Missing the Point
By Sankara Saranam

The Danish cartoon affair got me thinking of another cartoon. Imagine Jesus in the foreground holding a bomb. In the background an obstetrician is walking out of a Planned Parenthood building.

I won’t pictorially present the cartoon, but not because I want to avoid getting bombed. I just can’t draw and the cartoon is so simple that describing it gets the point across.

At least, you would think so.

The point of the cartoon is not to champion free speech. Nor is it to show any contempt for Jesus Christ or Christians. I personally do not consider the very existence of Jesus the man or the son of God myth, or even Yahweh, to enter the realm of probable or useful knowledge. And as for Christians, I identify with them as fellow human beings, which I consider more vital than respecting them as Christians. Indeed, like the mythic god of Christianity who is “no respecter of persons,” I do not acknowledge the existence of Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc in the absolute sense. These terms are all relative brands of self-mystification that hide our human unity under layers of divisive conventions.

The point of the cartoon is not to gratuitously offend, nor is it to broadly paint all followers of Jesus as bomb toting, abortion hating zealots. Of course, the narrow sense of self is always easily offended, no matter whether it was racial, political, or religious ideology that narrowed it. But that does not mean the cartoon is offensive; rather, it means the narrow self is the offensive party. Anyone who views it and allows time to calmly think about it should get the idea the cartoon is trying to convey without being offended.

But in this day and age, expecting anywhere near the majority of people to get the point of such a cartoon is almost like expecting Jesus to descend from the clouds and save us from all the threats to our existence that we have set in motion. It is wishful thinking because the world is becoming to be made up of largely unthinking zealots who freak out the minute they feel their narrow sense of self is challenged, apathetic masses who don’t bother to get or miss the point, pundits who play politically correct in decrying the cartoon as insulting while marginally conveying a lesser point to the cartoon, and moderate religionists who perforce act as apologists for fundamentalists who do blow up people by shifting most of the attention and blame to the cartoonist and the newspaper that printed it.

And all the while, the violence and divisiveness-promoting remarks that were either put in or come out of the mouths of Jesus, Muhammad, Yahweh, and all other manner of tribal gods and heroes are overlooked.

But that violent attitudes are sanctified in religious texts is not the point either. The point of the cartoon is that if one does anything in the name of Jesus or God or whatever personal mythic image of the Infinite one holds dear, then one must be prepared to squarely imagine that mythic image carrying out that very act. There aren’t many so-called Christians blowing up abortion clinics, but millions of people consider abortion to be murder, and we all know what we do to murderers in America.

For those who do outwardly or inwardly condone such an action, the described above cartoon is a mirror. It reflects the Jesus they hold near and dear.

Mirrors in this context are not the things we use to groom ourselves. I’d say few people really look in the mirror anymore. It’s a dying art, and that’s saying a lot for an art form that never had much traction in human lives. The introspective life, where we practice brutal self-analysis with scathing honesty, is not a popular one to live. Hence, it becomes the job of philosophers, muckrakers, iconoclasts, and cartoonists to hold up the mirror of self-examination once in a while.

Some people bomb in the name of Allah and Muhammad. They proudly call themselves slaves to their god. Such being the case, they should be able imagine their god act in the very manner they are acting. If they can’t, then they are acting improperly. If they can, well then we all have a far greater problem on our hands: they have the wrong god.

I have no problem with Allah, per se. Again, the god never existed, in my mind. It’s a god borrowed from a Dark Age body of literature praising another nonexistent god. Yahweh the war god, the Christian Heavenly Father who fornicates with married women, and the merciful Allah have no more existential validity to me than Mars, Zeus, or Shiva – another set of war, fornicating, and beneficent gods that humans created long ago.

I have a problem with the image of Allah that inspires the bombing of human beings. I have a problem with the idea of any god that cuts off discourse or does not value reason. Allah could just as easily be interpreted to inspire peace and dialogue, and an image of Allah that does so is my god too.

Countless Muslims are the servants to such an exemplary personal image of the Infinite, and have further defined Muhammad in their hearts as a prophet of peace and open-minded colloquium. They might look on the Danish cartoon as a useful mirror to those who have created images of bloodthirsty Allahs and Muhammads in their heads. Human beings who adopt Jesus as an image of inclusiveness and the larger self would view my cartoon as a commentary on those who have adopted a belligerent or imperial Jesus.

Every mythic image of gods and heroes will reflect the sense of self of each individual worshipper. That is the most vital point to such cartoons. In fact, to think that there is only one Jesus or Muhammad or God, as if these mythic images are in any way monolithic, is to take the point of these cartoons and not only miss it, but flush it down the toilet.

The toilets have been flushing nonstop for the last few weeks.