Danish Fried Chicken and Torah Thumpers

It seems that every day a new aspect of religion makes me wonder just how much longer humankind will exist before analytical thinking evolves itself out of the gene pool.

Not-so-recently, we all heard about the shitstorm over the Danish cartoon of Mohammed. "Oh, we better not fuck with the Muslims," says everyone. Why not? Every religion on Earth is made fun of in some way or another, why should Islam be any different? "Because of terrorism," is the response I am anticipating. First of all, that's blatant racism. Blatant. Furthermore, what you're saying is, that since pissing off the Muslims results in attacks, we should give Islam a special status over other religions, at whom fun is poked on a daily, if not hourly basis around the world. What does this say to the world? That we should make sure to give the Muslims what they want or they'll blow up our buildings? Well, my friends, that's giving in to terrorism, and as much as "letting the terrorists win" is thrown around as often as poop in the primate section of the zoo, in this case, that's really what is happening. There is no reason that Islam should be held in any higher esteem than any other religion in the world.

Secondly, there was a story about how in Iran, they're countering the Danish cartoon with a cartoon contest -- to see who can come up with the best anti-Semitic cartoon. Yeah, that'll definitely stick it to all the blue-eyed, blond haired Danish Jews we've all heard so much about. Not only that, but angry crowds burned a Pakistani KFC to cinders over this. A frigging KFC!

Now I'm going to introduce something a little less grandiose. During housing selection, one student called up (the day of, mind you...) and claimed that because of Orthodox Judaism, he/she was not allowed to look at a computer screen, and thus could not select housing. When told simply to have a friend do it instead, this was entirely unsatisfactory, as "the school should have some kind of procedure in place for people who are Jewish." Because clearly, that would never cross the minds of the people at a school when around a third of the students are Jewish! I can guarantee you that there are, say, a dozen other students on campus who follow Judaism as strictly and none of them had any goddamn issues.

On a grander level, though, isn't the whole point of things like keeping kosher, wearing the yarmulke, not working on the Shabbat and all that -- isn't the point to have to make changes in your life that aren't necessarily easy, in the name of pleasing (in this case, G-d) and affirming your faith? To me, this kid demanding that GW give him/her some special status because of his/her religion is like all those granola-munching vegan hippie shits who demand that all restaurants offer their shitty alternatives to real food. It's a choice that you make to affirm your faith in a moral/religious code. No one has any obligation to make life easier for you just because you choose to live in such a manner. And in the case of the Jewish person on Housing selection day, someone correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems to me that the reason a Jewish person makes all the abovementioned sacrifices is to affirm their faith. That's the whole point - you make sacrifices, and you deal with it as part of your faith, you don't go around demanding concessions to eliminate the element of sacrifice entirely.