Maybe it's because if you dis Islam, your friends will be watching your head being hacked off on YouTube.
Well, even the agnostics are seeing the blatant hypocrisy of this double standard, and are beginning to take a stand--for Christianity. Alan Bolt, an agnostic and a columnist for Australia's Herald Sun, writes a column that highlights the double standard that has become self-evident all over Western Civilization. Here is a giant size excerpt for your reading pleasure:
...it seems the cheap-shot sneers of intolerant atheists are fewer this year. More muted. And the squawks we still hear seem more contemptible.
It would be no wonder. I wouldn’t be alone in thinking each time an artist or commentator insults Christians: friend, if you’re so brave, say that about Islam.
Show us your chocolate Mohammeds. Show us your Korans dipped in urine.
Where is the singer who will rip up a Koran as Marilyn Manson ripped up a Bible? Or will on television tear up a picture of Islam’s most honoured preacher as Sinead O’Connor shredded one of the great Pope John Paul II?
It’s not as if Islam doesn’t threaten our artists more than does Christianity.
See only the murder of film director Theo van Gogh or the fatwa on writer Salman Rushdie or the stabbing of Rushdie’s translator. Or see those deadly riots against the Mohammed cartoons.
So when I see a Western artist mock Christ, I see an artist advertising not his courage but his cowardice – by not daring to mock what would threaten him more.
I am most certainly not saying that moderate Islam should now be treated with the childish disrespect so often shown to Christianity.
Nor am I saying most Muslims endorse violence, or that there aren’t a few Christians who might turn violent, too.
After all, the chocolate Jesus has been removed from display when Lab Gallery’s boss was bombarded with complaints and even – he claims – threats.
But I am saying that more people now know there is a double standard here illustrated perfectly by the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which banned acts that told jokes against Muslims but promoted ones that lampooned Christians.
It’s this blatant double standard that may finally have shamed some of the usual jeerers into showing Christianity a little respect.
And perhaps – just perhaps – more of us might be wakening to a truth we too long took for granted. It’s no accident that we feel safer insulting Christians than trashing almost anyone else.
This is a religion that’s always preached tolerance, reason and non-violence, even if too many of its followers have seemed deaf.
It’s also urged us to leave the judgment of others to God (a message I ignore for professional reasons). We are the beneficiaries of that preaching, even those of us who aren’t Christians.
We live in a society, founded on Christian principles, that guards our right to speak, and even to abuse things we should praise.
We can now vilify Jesus and damn priests, and risk nothing but hard looks from a soft bishop, and a job offer from The Age.
SOURCE: Morning Herald: 6 APRIL 2007: Kinder to our Christians
HAT TIP: Michelle Malkin
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