Allah Has No Funny Bone

“Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth - a sense of humor.” (Author Unknown)

“A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” (Clive James)

I remember many years ago, when still religious, staying in a hotel while on vacation and enjoying the luxury of watching television, something that I never did at home and still would prefer to avoid today. The late, great Johnny Carson was doing a bit about the Ayatollah’s takeover of Iran and the outrage over Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses.” The Ayatollah’s threats consisted of the usual Islamic vitriolic claptrap i.e. blood flowing in rivers, revenge of God, etc. Carson, with masterful delivery, summed up the matter in one simple question, “Is there a word in their language for lighten up?”

There is no doubt that Islam needs to lighten up. Frankly, they need to join the rest of the civilized word and learn to accept a little joke once in a while. It’s not as if they haven’t earned the right to be laughed at, when one considers how unbelievably backward their religion and culture seems to be. Like all religious fundamentalism, it should be ridiculed as much as possible, especially in light of how Islam reacts to mere insults.

Islam could learn a thing or two from the Jews. No one has faced more ridicule, persecution, and universal malevolence than have the Jews yet, when faced with neo-Nazi web sites, Klan rallies, and a thousands of anti Israeli and anti-Jewish articles and cartoons published by Arabic speaking periodicals, one doesn’t see the Jews staging violent protests, burning embassies, or wishing death upon the authors. We are a civilized people.

I fully understand the outrage that many true believers feel over this alleged slight of their ‘prophet’. So they’re angry. I get it. Now when I am outraged, I write my representatives in Congress, boycott the newspaper, and address the issue on my blog or directly with others. Peaceful protest is an effective tool as well. Violence is never an option. My detractors have an opinion, I have an opinion, and those opinions, in the civilized world, battle in out in the realm of opinion, not on the streets of flesh and blood.

The danger posed by Islamic violence is symptomatic of most fundamental dogmatisms. They would use violence to stamp out my right to expression, thought, speech, and belief. I hear the same sort of Dark-Age speak from many Christians, too, and it bothers me that people have so little tolerance for other ideas that they react with violent intent upon confronting an idea coming from anywhere outside their own little comfort zone.

If your belief system is so fragile that you can’t handle a little joke or two, then you need psychotherapy. If you are violent as well, then you need to be separated from society and treated with whatever it takes to make you a civilized human being and able to function peacefully in our world. No matter where we go in life, we will face some disagreement, and how we handle such circumstances reveals our own sense of worth and maturity.

Dear Moslem Earthling. Get the fuck over it. You are showing the world just how brittle your 7th century mentality and beliefs really are. Sheesh.

“Anyone without a sense of humor is at the mercy of everyone else.” (William Rotsler)