We pull back too much because Islamic nutjobs will get violent because you dared draw a picture that resembled their stupid prophet. By doing that, we are giving them what they want and telling other religious groups that if they get violent enough, we’ll stop to appease them too.
You can mock Jesus, Moses, Krishna and any other religious figure because their followers, at worse, are going to verbally protest, if they do anything at all. But draw fucking Muhammad and people will tell you to knock it off because we don’t want to upset the assholes who will riot and kill people because they can’t handle someone having a differing opinion. Society bends over backwards to not offend Islam out of fear.
In response, we should have doubled down. Make more cartoons, get more vulgar with it…go all in, not stopped to appease them. Some people did for a while immediately after the attack, but not enough and not long enough, imo.
Why doesn’t the same happen for Hinduism? It’s mocked relentlessly and is predominately practiced by non-whites, perhaps even more so than Islam, but we never hear any worries of racism for it. Why do we worry for one religion and not another? What about Judaism? It’s perhaps the most mocked/satirized religion throughout history and the only one that actually shares its background with a race, but we never worry about racism towards it like Islam?