Redecorating Islam

Diana West, in her columns Submission Is All In Your Dhimmitude and Nonsense and Sensibility at Townhall.com, takes to task the Dhimmi crowd that is willing to bow to Shari'a law censorship in the name of "good manners, taste and self-restraint." She's a smart lady. Money Quote:

Let's take what are considered the most inflammatory of the Danish Dozen: Bomb-head Muhammad; and Muhammad in the clouds, telling arriving suicide bombers that Islamic paradise is plumb out of virgins. What Denmark's cartoonists did in these caricatures is something few writers have dared to do in words: They made visual reference to the copious, historical and contemporary theological underpinnings of holy war (jihad) and suicide bombings. What is offensive here, then, is not the extremely mild caricature, but rather those theological underpinnings of holy war and suicide bombings. When the widely influential Sheik Yusef al-Qaradawi can praise Muhammad as "an epitome for religious warriors (mujahideen)," Muhammad, a jihad model, shouldn't be a taboo subject in the West, either in caricature or commentary, and certainly shouldn't be super-sacralized, in effect, by a fearfully polite censorship. The subject should be laid out for all to see.

The valiant Dutch parliamentarian and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali put it this way: "You cannot liberalize Islam without criticizing the Prophet and the Koran. ... You cannot redecorate a house without entering inside." And especially when you're not allowed to see what it looks like.