I've seen this sort of rhetoric used many times before...

The leader of Germany's opposition Greens party said Friday that cartoons depicting the Islamic Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist were "racist" and that their publication across Europe had been irresponsible.

... and I think I've finally figured out what's going on with that.

Obviously, Islam isn't a racist religion -- except for the US Nation-of-Islam variant, it is a global faith, open to people of any ethic abstraction. True, Islamic scriptures are in Arabic, but again, that's still a language or perhaps even culture, not a race. Arab, Persian, Asia, Black, European -- I know of Muslims of all these races.

In fact, there is some evidence Mohammad himself was a white guy:

I heard Abii Juhaifa saying, "I saw the Prophet, and Al-Hasan bin 'Ali resembled him." I said to Abu- Juhaifa, "Describe him for me." He said, "He was white and his beard was black with some white hair. He promised to give us 13 young she-camels, but he expired before we could get them."
[Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 56, Number 744]

While we were sitting with the Prophet in the mosque, a man came riding on a camel. He made his camel kneel down in the mosque, tied its foreleg and then said: "Who amongst you is Muhammad?" At that time the Prophet was sitting amongst us (his companions) leaning on his arm. We replied, "This white man reclining on his arm."
[Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 3, Number 63]

So why are some people so easily confused between race and religion in this case? Is it truly that some people cannot tell the difference between a belief system and a genetic history? Do people not know that if you are, for example, Indian, that you might also be Christian, Hindu, or Muslim?

In Western culture, mostly in reaction to the race-based system of slavery Europeans and Americans exploited for several centuries, criticizing a person or group based on race has come to be recognized as a social taboo. The charge of "racist" has become one of the worst insults you can throw at someone, so there is always the temptation to drop this particular bomb.

On the other hand, it is quite common here to criticize religion. There are many individuals and groups in West who commonly criticize -- sometimes in nearly-obscene terms -- Christianity or one of it's subgroups. Except in particularly prominent cases (major motion pictures, particularly caustic comments by notable politicians) this sort of criticism is incessant in many contexts -- the "arts", universities, politics -- and barely raises an eyebrow. Unlike yelling "Racist!", the epithet: "Anti-religious!" holds no punch at all. Indeed, many wear it as a badge of honor.

Cross soaked in urine as art? Image of Virgin Mary in elephant dung? The issue raised is subsidy by taxpayers, not right of expression. Sinead O'Connor rips up a picture of the Pope on SNL, intoning: "Fight the real enemy." Do Catholics riot? Most just scratch their heads, wondering what on earth inspired such venom against such a nice old man as John Paul. Wild claims that Opus Dei Catholics are actually murderous assassins? The money rolls in.

So we can't possibly admit that a cartoon linking Mohammad and an image of a bomb is some kind of religious criticism. That would put it in -- why -- the same category as our own endless hysterical diatribes against "the religious right".

So suddenly the issue becomes "race", not -- duh -- religion, as it obviously is.

Cognitive dissonance galore.