The publication of a few Muh*ad cartoons by Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten caused a disproportiate reaction among fundamentalist muslims. Touch Muh*ad and you run the risk of having your property destroyed and a price being put on your head. Although it's never right to intentionally hurt people, I find the politically correct appeasement policy expressed by some leading political and religious leaders more startling than any of those cartoons. By principle I believe that the freedom of press and speech is more important than any religion's sacred cows, including Christianity's.
Now an Iranian newspaper, ready to pour oil on the fire, threatened to publish cartoons that mock the Jews and the holocaust. That's nothing new, really, and it has nothing to do with freedom of press, because there is no freedom of press in sharia-ruled Iran. Arabic, Palestinian and Iranian newspapers have been very intentional and structural in their anti-jewish propaganda over the past few years. Check out this article by Honest Reporting. Besides, in most islamic nations Christians are being discriminated and persecuted, while in Denmark and other EU nations muslims enjoy the same rights and liberties as other citizens. This whole controversy is becoming quite pathetic, and raises the question: what's under the surface?
Of course it's a clash of cultures. The values of Western democracy are incompatible with the more or less medieval mindset of fundamentalist muslims. But we also have to see the spiritual dynamics. Intercessors picked up on the developments and discern a 'spirit of ji*ad'. However you name it, when studying the life of Muh*ad it becomes quite obvious that he not only received 'revelation' from a demonic being, but also had a slightly distorted personality. He commited genocide on the jews in town, and the persistant focus of some of his followers on ji*ad, certainly indicates that there is a spirit of war and violence in the roots of this religion. The way the cartoon controversy is currently being exploited by muslim fundamentalist organisations is manipulative and intended to intimidate. They seem to be quite successful with that.
The challenge for Jesus-followers is to love and honor muslims and share Christ with them, while discerning the spirits of war and intimidation at work behind islam as a whole, and clearly confronting that in prayer.
Now how about humor - are cartoons beneficial at all from a Christian point of view? Yes, says Dutch ethics professor G.C. den Hertog in the Reformed Daily. And how about muslims - is there any sense of humor in the muslim world? Warner Independent Pictures just released a movie titled 'Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World' (broadband trailer here), that made it to the official selection of the Dubai International Film Festival. So yes, praise God, there are muslims with a sense of humor.