My husband got an e-mail a few days ago, and has given me permission to share it. A Muslim acquaintance wrote him with a link to the following picture and said it was "as despicable and offensive as the recent caricatures of Islam's Prophet."
I loved Jon's response to it:
Well, as a Christian I find this much more stupid and foolish than offensive. Frankly, it’s just not a very good costume. On the offensiveness scale, I’d say it rates as tacky and insensitive.
I think the best thing to do about someone like this is ignore him. My guess is, Jesus would feel the same way. Actually, I doubt Jesus would ignore the human being, but I suspect he would ignore the antics and the costume.
Implicit in Jon's response is the observation that Mark Shea has made many times about the difference in responses to equally offensive and blasphemous depictions of both Christianity and Islam. (See Mark's article, "The Day the Free Press Committed Suicide.") When Christians are faced with this kind of thing, at least lately, they tend to turn the other cheek. Muslims, on the other hand (or at least extremist Muslims), often tend to riot and kill people and kidnap reporters, and then force them to convert at gunpoint.
Jon, however, says it better than Mark. Jon is saying to his Muslim friend that the reason Christians respond by ignoring it is because they understand that's probably (as much as I hate the phrase) what Jesus would do. If Jon's friend was smart, I'm sure he got the implication about the Muslims that riot over it.
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