Everybody who is saying you can talk about the cartoons without showing them is missing the point. Your heart is in the right place but it's misguided.
By making the images themselves taboo, you turn them into a monster. You give them a power that grows and grows into something twisted and perverse.
People are not inherently evil. In history, good people sent their wives and daughters to be burned at stakes. People sent their daughters to the nuns to be abused and have their children taken from them. People allowed their sons to be abused by priests. They did this because of the power of taboo and turning a blind eye for fear of upsetting the religious or societal apple cart.
It was tolerated because people were afraid to ridicule and belittle the stupid ideas of the time. The seeds sewn into them as impressionable children, grew into something twisted and perverse and allowed them to justify the grotesque in the name of perceived good.
These are lessons from the past but they are relevant today. Whether or not we want it, or we all just want a polite and friendly world, someone, somewhere will draw and show these cartoons again and someone, somewhere will die because of them.
When that happens, we will all sit around and say how terrible it is, how a cartoon should never cost someone their life. Some will say it was ill judged to draw and show it, while others will be angry and lash out at Muslims, but very few of us will look at our role and contribution towards a society that allows that to happen.
By confronting a taboo we take it's power. By showing the cartoon we remove the fear of the unknown and the potential for a simple image to grow into something bigger. Being able to ridicule ourselves and the way we perceive the world is a hugely important part of education and self growth.
The man who cuts off the head of the illustrator of a cartoon, or the teacher who shares it, does not think he is an evil man. He went to a school where he was taught the evjl was for anyone to depict the prophet. He grew up in a society that blames the teacher or the artist, who says they are oppressing his religion or that they hate Islam. When the time comes, the idea of the cartoon that he has never seen, the taboo, has grown into something else and the jump from being outraged at a cartoon and believing a human being needs to lose their life is no longer so wide.
You have a Muslim in this thread who has said it is only forbidden for Muslims to depict the prophet. Others have a different idea but because their, more violent interpretation of the text was never challenged, never ridiculed, we are where we are now.
By showing children the cartoons, we allow them to confront the ridiculousness of it. For every one who is upset by it, more will look and think "it's just a fecking cartoon". Sure their parents might be upset because they grew up with the taboo, just like parents were upset when evolution was added to curriculums, or when they thought an intelligent daughter was a witch, or when they though children of different colours shouldn't be educated togwther. We cannot limit the education of children to the same failures of education in their parents or we will never improve.
We cannot ridicule some religions and beliefs but be afraid to do so to others for fear of upsetting them. Not when lives and freedoms are at stake.
