The Dish

Norway’s Muslims demonstrate against non-Muslims’ right to portray images of Muhammad.

He was one of the "Super Best Friends" in a July 2001 episode. You can see the show here. Keep blasphemy alive! Here’s his picture, alongside, Jesus, Buddha, and David Blaine, among others.

The first photos … not exactly thrilling, but the notion that the president barely knew the most powerful Republican lobbyist in Washington is, well, silly.

They’ve published the cartoons on their site. Congrats, Bill.

So Fox won’t portray tame images of Muhammad, but they will broadcast "Passion of the Christ II: Crucify This." Here’s the full compendium of Jesus references on Family Guy. You wanna see Jesus turn water into "funk"? Enjoy. Keep sending in examples of media double-standards, and I’ll keep posting them.

Here’s a small account of something that happened almost forty years ago. It suggests that the rioting over cartoons is not simply a function of today’s more extremist Islam, but something integral to Islam itself.

For my Sunday Times readers, and anyone else who is interested, here’s another link to what Bill Clinton called the "totally outrageous" cartoons.

"Thursday, CNN broadcast a story on how common anti-Semitic caricatures are in the Arab press and illustrated it with ‚Äî you guessed it ‚Äî one virulently anti-Semitic cartoon after another. As the segment concluded, Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera and piously explained that while CNN had decided as a matter of policy not to broadcast any image of Muhammad, telling the story of anti-Semitism in the Arab press required showing those caricatures. He didn’t even blush," – Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times, today.

Rutten has a challenge to the mainstream media: will they avoid any images of the upcoming anti-Catholic movie, "The Da Vinci Code"? Of course, they won’t. And, I might add, I hope they won’t. Here’s a bleg to readers: please keep your eyes open for media representations of objects or images blasphemous to strict Christians and Jews. Last week, for example, the cartoon series, "Drawn Together," depicted Jesus refusing to extend compassion for one of the characters and eventually puking. Have you heard of it? South Park has Jesus as one its regular characters, and a recent South Park episode portrayed a statue of the Virgin Mary, with blood exploding out of her ass onto the face of the Pope. Yes, some people protested, but most Catholics and Jews understand that this kind of stuff is the price of freedom. Most Muslims – and I’m including the moderate ones here, as well – do not. It’s time for them to get over it. And it’s time for the media bigwigs to end their craven, fear-driven double-standards.

Another charming remark from Mahmoud Ahmadeinejad:

"Do the removal of Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations."

He is surely referring to something his government has referred to before: a nuclear attack on Israel, and, via, terrorists, on the West as a whole. These are the 1930s all over again. And we’re doing our utmost not to upset the aggressors.

The woman now living under police protection for standing up to Islamist bullies, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, spoke in Berlin yesterday. Her speech will one day be a critical historical document of our time. Her theme? The right to offend. Yes: offend. I’m tired of these excuses for self and actual censorship, saying free speech is only legit if it doesn’t offend someone’s religion. Free speech is at its most legitimate when it is offending people. That’s how societies change. And the absence of it is one reason so much of the Arab-Muslim world is an economic, cultural and political basket-case. These cultures need confronting, not enabling.