When it comes to religious scandal, I like to think that the heart of the issue is usually communication (or its breakdown). If people had known straight away that priests were abusing kids, that shit would have been shut down immediately. Children don’t talk about what makes them uncomfortable, and parents didn’t know that they should be asking prying questions about their pastor’s sexual preferences. People wanted retribution, and the Church thought they heard “divine” retribution, and tried to deal with it internally. Again, the problem is communication.

And this crap isn’t localized to the Christian community. When the Islamic community freaks out because an image of Muhammad surfaces somewhere, the conversation seems to go like this:

Islam: “That’s not allowed in our religion!”
Cartoonist: “I’m not Islamic, so the law does not apply to me.”
Islam: “Take it down or we’ll kill you!”
Cartoonist: “Never! Freedom of expression! Freedom of speech!”
Publicist: “We apologize to all the crazy people who sent death threats. You win for now.”

What the hell is this? It’s a communication FAIL. It’s the crazy guy on the bus demanding that you not sit on his imaginary friend in the next seat. But not only that, it’s the sense of entitlement that makes my blood boil. The argument against displaying images of Muhammad all comes down to “Because I said so,” and when adults use that kind of “logic” with other adults, someone has to call foul.

Wake up, Comedy Central. At the end of the day, these terrorists are just a bunch of children throwing a world-class tantrum about something the majority of your viewership don’t believe exists. You can’t poke fun at every other group, then make an exception for Islam just because they’re the scariest. Don’t be afraid. Make us laugh.