The recent developments in Paris are indeed sad. The satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, went to extremes, as satire often does, in criticizing Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other religions. But cartoons about Mohammed are, of course, verboten around the world, and twelve staff members paid with their lives for overstepping that red line.
Satire, although useful at times for puncturing over-inflated egos of politicos, celebrities, and others, is not the best way to get information across â?? particularly as regards a person like Mohammed, about whom so little is known. As I mentioned in a previous column, the best antidote to the alarming popular ignorance about this prophet of Islam might be a movie dramatizing the main points in his life.
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