Islamic Cartoons

Muslims around the world are going nuts in response to political cartoons that make satire of Islam and the prophet Mohommad. Now in the West, this "going nuts" would entail fierce letter writting to the editors, or maybe picketing the offices and a boycott of the sponsors. In the Islamic world, this entails bombing the religion most closely associated with the perpetraters. This may seem strange to us in the West, but in Islamic culture, everything is viewed through the eyes of religion. Hence, if a secular person in Europe, whose grand parents were christians writes a harmful, insulting cartoon, then the nearest christian church, no matter the denomination or the fact that the people who attend this church live thousands of miles away, are to blame, and violence is vistited onto them. An example is Islamic Jihad's threat against christians living in the Gaza strip. Now most people in the rest of the world would know that the christians in Gaza have nothing to do with this. And Hamas, at least on the surface, is saying that no attacks will take place.

This is (conjecture alert) the thinking I believe is going on in the Vatican with the statement issued stating that Caricatures of Mohammed are a "Scandal,".

An influential Vatican prelate has declared that caricatures of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, published in the European press, are a "scandal."

In the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Cardinal Achille Silvestrini wrote that the deliberate mockery of religious beliefs is offensive, and should be curbed. He said that the cartoons which have caused a furor across Europe and the Islamic world illustrated a tendency in Western society to consider liberty of expression as an absolute right.

I think that the Vatican knows that its priets and religious as well as parishoners are in danger and is seeking to provide some safety for them with this statement. True, critisism of someones faith is a sensitive matter and should not be done to insult, as may or may not be the case in Europe. After all how many times have we christians had to endure scathing insults from secular papers and other media outlets?

The Vatican (I believe) is trying to thread the eye of the needle with this statement. Will it work? Shouldn't we also respect others religions?