Of course, no one will be killed over this. There will most likely not be any protests. This will almost certainly be the only mention you see of this anywhere. And Muslims who believe that it is justifiable to kill cartoonists who draw pictures of Muhammad (and they aren’t hard to find — I’ve met several in cabs in various American cities) believe that this demonstrates Christian weakness and impiety, and manifests their indifference to religion. The one great truth that no one is even attempting to communicate is that the lack of protest over incidents like this one is not a sign of weakness, impiety or indifference. Rather, it comes from an understanding that in a civil society in which people of differing views live together, we all have to put up with being offended now and again.
The fact that this simple truth and basic element of pluralism is not being communicated to Muslims, but rather Western authorities are all too willing to do what they can to remove all offense to them, does not bode well for the future of free speech and free inquiry.
“Bill Maher Attacks Christians Over Communion Sacrament,” by Ken Shepherd for NewsBusters:
Appearing on the Friday “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” comedian Bill Maher took repeated swipes at the Republican Party and conservatives as idiotic, bigoted, homophobic, you know, all the usual epithets.
Although his material was registering mostly nervous laughter from the audience, Maher plunged further into his assault on traditional values, attacking Christians, particularly Catholics, by insisting that one has to be “schizophrenic” to go about life normally for six days a week only to, on the seventh go to church and believe that when drinking communion wine one is drinking “the blood of a 2,000-year old space god.”