Harry Turtledove actually has a number of short stories that he has written of an alt. history where Mohammed was a simple Christian monk. As I recall, he become famous for the hymns he composed…

And still might, thanks to the one-on-one mass encounter we are now painfully having with the Muslim world. When the Ummah of Submission meets the Ummah of Freedom something changes in the minds of both. What that change is we cannot fully forsee. It won’t look like the West, but it will still have our mark. They may yet learn to value the individual. We may yet regain the focused pride and dignity we once had as a culture. How much suffering that will take is the only question.

Well, I think that the incisive view of Western v. Islamic culture can be described as the west learning from it’s mistakes.

Western civilization, as we consider it, is fraught with evil deeds and terrible times. And yet, it time and again has shown the capacity, as if it were almost a sentient being, to stop, consider it’s actions, and then work to rectify it’s mistakes.

The west has grown morally and intellectualy in stages, progressing from near-chaos to feudalism to rennaissance to enlightment to republicanism and democracy.

Islam has remained mired in the 8th century. It seeks to destroy that which it cannot bring down to it’s level, that and those which will not “submit”.

It just seems such a shame, such an incredible waste of potential, to see more than a billion of our fellow humans reduced to submission to a repressive and intolerant way of life. What great things might they have accomplished, what wonders might they have created, what benefits to mankind around the world might have been, had not their civilization been still-born by their Prophet.

Respects,

Actually, I think the cartoon poses an interesting hypothesis. What if Mohammed had never been born? Think how much pain and suffering the current time could have been spared had he not taken a certain segment of humanity down that particular spiritual rathole.

Since I am a big fan of alternative history (or as they prefer to call it counter-factual) I think its an interesting premise.

And it is just a cartoon……………

Mr. Miller is combining secular humanistic smugness with historical ignorance. The resulting work product is predictable, and sad on all the levels that you covered.

Oh, and monkish isn’t the precise word that springs to mind when I think about the handful of milblogs that I read.