Look! I'm making fun of the Prophet of Islam!

"The Messenger believes in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, as do the men of faith. Each one of them believes in God, His angels, His books, and His Messengers. They say: 'We make no distinction between one and another of His Messengers.' And they say: 'We hear, and we obey. We seek Thy forgiveness, Our Lord, and to Thee is the end of all journeys.'" (Al-Baqarah, 2:285)

 

Jesus, after all, was a prophet of Islam.  So were Adam, Noah, Moses, David, John - there's a whole list of 'em. 

 

The message conveyed by Mohammed is supposed to be the same conveyed by each prophet that proceeded him.  They don't matter; the vehicle doesn't matter.  Only the message does.

 

The cult of Mohammed (peace be upon him) that's risen up stands in direct contrast to the message he himself tried to convey, tried to correct after the boondoggle that was Christianity. 

 

What happened there?  People started to idolize Jesus as more than just a man, as an actual manifestation of God.

 

Well, we're all manifestations of God (peace be upon us).  And I'm pretty sure God did not intend for us to go about murdering each other for suggesting our moms wear army boots. 

 

Because that's essentially what this argument is about.  Mohammed has been placed above all other human beings, essentially making him an extension of God.  God, of course, cannot be offended by the meagre likes of us. 

 

This business of taking offense and seeking retribution supersedes Islam; you see it in the schoolyard with teams of taunting children as much as you see it in gang warfare.  Unfortunately, Islam has the dubious honour of being the standard-bearer for our human predilection to idolize and outsource responsibility.  This is something we do so that we might be as selfish and arrogant and violent as we please without thinking about the human consequences for our action or inaction.

 

Mohammed was a messenger, period.  We don't shoot messengers; we shouldn't idolize them either.

 

If you find it offensive that Mohammed, or Jesus for that matter get lampooned in cartoons, you should be equally offended and actively seeking retribution for every other instance of individuals being lampooned - including every politician from Barack Obama to Kim Jong-un.  But nobody's going around killing every satirist in the world, are they?

 

As they should not.  Because that's not the answer.  And it's definitely not what any of the prophets wanted.

 

Every single person on this earth is sacred; every life should be celebrated as a manifestation of that to which we all belong.  You can refer to a God or Gods, to the biosphere, to Tao, whatever you want, but the fact is that we are more than bodies, more than images.

 

To take offense at a cartoon and commit murder in the name of a man, much less a diety, offends everything the Abrahamic faiths and all major world faiths hold dear.

 

Such is not the will of Allah. 

 

Such is not the will of Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, As-Salam, Al-Ghaffar, Al-Latif, Ash-Shakur or Al-Hakam.

 

Be wary; the compulsion to commit murder among the people God created is not God's will at all.  It comes from elsewhere.