Even the most gross-out porn DVD in my vast collection can’t compare to the religious porn sweeping the Middle East. Strictly speaking, the cartoon of the prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse is not in the same category as the top ten dogpile orgies compiled in ROCCO’S BEST GANG BANGS from Evil Angel. But this collection of Rocco Siffredi’s herky-jerk ream jobs and the twelve caricatures of Muhammad published in a Denmark newspaper have one thing in common: They get male juices flowing. So while we hedonists in the West relax with a handjob, the horny boys in the desert dreaming of seventy-one virgins in paradise get off by going on a violent rampage, torching Danish diplomatic missions in Syria, Lebanon and Iran. A dozen or so of the faithful have been killed in the process. The cartoons touched a raw nerve because Islam tradition forbids any depictions of their sixth-century prophet. A group of fundamentalist Muslim clerics in Denmark whipped things up by circulating the cartoons to their brethren in the Middle East. But here’s the kicker. They tossed in three that had not been published: Muhammad depicted as a pig, a pedophile, and best of the batch, Muhammad fucking a dog. They needed some porn to stoke the flames. The fiasco has also created a climate of fear among media outlets in this country. As of this writing, only a few daily newspapers have run the cartoons, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Sun. Several of the blab-show hosts on the FOX network have displayed the cartoons while gleefully pointing out the three major networks and MSNBC have chickened out. This is a touchy issue. One can understand an editor’s concern about his newspaper office getting firebombed. Still, that has not happened at FOX. I’m inclined to agree with the right-wing blowhards in FOXland standing up against intimidation and for free expression. That can’t be said for the New York Press, one of the best alternative weeklies in the country. When the editor, Harry Siegel, announced he would run the cartoons, the publisher refused. Siegel and a number of others on the editorial staff quit in protest. It’s a sad state of affairs when a courageous journalist such as Harry Siegel gets the shaft due to blowback from a pack of diseased Islamic clerics aching with visceral hatred for the West. These black-robed assholes wave their blood-stained swords and call for the beheadings of Danish cartoonists, yet they got no problem with their own newspapers throughout the Arab world routinely running vile anti-Semitic illustrations. This has been going on for years, likely dating back to the night the prophet Muhammad begged Moses to butt-fuck him. Moses turned him down and pointed toward a flock of sheep. Last month a government run newspaper in Tehran announced a Holocaust cartoon contest. (Can’t you just imagine the repressed clerics in their role as cartoon jurists, cackling with glee and shooting their wads across the submissions?) Not to be outdone, the Arab European League came up with a cartoon on its website of Hitler in bed with Anne Frank. “Write this one in your diary, Anne,” reads the caption. Why should Muhammad deserve immunity from satire in light of this? Well, that’s easy. We are dealing with pig-headed religious fascists who want to ensure the minds of future generations are locked in medieval theology, apocalyptic nonsense, and hatred of Jews. Obviously, all 1.6 billion Muslims across the globe don’t buy this. But a shitload of them do, as they made clear in their demonstrations. Here’s their message on placards: “Freedom Go to Hell,” “Exterminate Those Who Mock Islam,” and “Europe, Your 9/11 is on the Way.” We are left not only with Muslim contempt for democracy, freedom, individual rights, liberty, pluralism and material well-being—we are left with Muslim contempt for religion. Except their own. Long live the seditious cartoons out of Copenhagen.