So now, a French magazine has published two cartoon depictions of Muhammad naked. And because of that, the French government has closed schools and 20 embassies because of the expected backlash.

Why do people have to go out of their way to antagonize people?

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09...-20-countries/

I mostly attribute it to the rampant xenophobia that has unfortunately characterized France as of late, as well as the fact that some people will do anything to sell a few more issues of whatever rag they're putting out.

Honestly, a comment there raised a very good point. Why are they mocking Mohammad, and by extension the religion itself, instead of the actual extremists? Why is the religion the one that is demonized rather than the ones that twist it to their own ends? It's entirely possible to express discontent towards what some Muslims do without having to do something that provokes violent protest. We all remember Stone and Parker's 'Team America' and their ridiculous caricature of Islamic terrorists. And yet, no one was killed for it, and there weren't world wide protests.

Ironically part of the problem may be the rule in Islam about portraying the prophet to begin with. When Christian terrorists bomb a subway, for example, it is perfectly legitimate to have a cartoon of Jesus mourning what is done in his name. A way to use the figure of the religion to speak to the mainstream and denounce what teh fringe group has done. With islam if you depict the prophet at all you are already pushing the mainstream away, so the only point in doing so is to do something inflamatory.
If you do a web search for "Zombie Jesus" you will find a lot of material that is derogatory to Christianity. However it tends to provike much less reaction because it is not considered blasphemy by most simply to have a picture of Jesus.
To be fair, I can see why the rule was made- given the level of iconism in Christianity at the time which Muslims took for Idolotry, they wanted to avoid the possibility of the same eventually happening with their religion, but personally I think this has gone to far...

That still doesn't change why one can't employ a small amount of awareness. While Jesus and God and et cetera are depicted, most direct ridicule goes towards actual priests, rabbis, or whatever the bigot de jour is up for mockery. Whereas it tends to be all or nothing when it comes towards Islam. Which is odd because directly attacking the people doing something bad is usually a more effective tool if one is not setting out to demonize an entire faith, as well as not drawing anything like the same controversy.

Also note that the depictions of Mohammad subject to recent controversy, excepting maybe the one from South Park just due to how very little screen time he gets, tend to be about as far away from 'religious figure mourning violence done in his name' as you can get. Most of it tends towards what would be offensive regardless of who it was, if not showing Mohammad directly causing the attack. There's no sympathy, just a direct xenophobic attack.

You are missing the point of my post. Nobody will do "Mohamed mourning the violence of Islam" because it would be counterproductive- the production of a picture of Mohammed would create more anger than the message could possibly quell. The skewing of purposes to teh pictures occurs because moderate depictions are in essence subtracted from the equation out of respect for the religious sensibilities of islam. in short the only people who would produce a picture of Muhamed are those who have no respect for Islam, so it is inherant that all images produced will be disrespectfull.

It's like putting a violet filter on sunlight then asking why the rainbow has only one color band.

Okay, so why should we as a society just go 'oh, you bigots' and kick the ball further down the street? And this applies to all bigots really, not just the ones targeting Islam.

Because you can't prosecute people just for being wrong, or else you end up being a tyrant who is forcing everyone else to agree with you because you think every other point of view is wrong.

We shouldn't, unless they get right in our faces with it. That's my general attitude, and it seems to have worked for me.
I'll tolerate their attitudes and words as long as they show equal tolerance to my desire not to be forced to listen to it.
On the other paw, if people get right in my face with their crap, and won't back off no matter how politely I ask them, I reserve the right to shove back where it came from, along with the teeth it came through. Call it behavioral re-education therapy. :-)

I swear, we should have something like a "if you know this is going to piss people off, don't do it" law somewhere...

Why? I recently wrote and published a book (on Kindle) that i know will piss some people off, but unlike "Innocence of the Muslms" it also has artistic value (I'll leave it to others to decide how much), and is at least an attempt to be thought provoking, even if some people may dislike some of the thoughts it provokes rather than being simply insulting and derogatory. I don't know how the site would feel abou me mentioning the the title for anyone who would be interested, but I don't think that we should be making laws which might have government bodies having to choose which artistic sentments are allowed to be expressed...