Another example of a set of religious beliefs I will happily call “barbaric”:
“Only Christians can hold public office, because you swear on a Bible, and only a Christian can do that!”
I did no such thing. I specifically mentioned the Christians you referenced in the very next sentence, to show that you clearly have issues with all religions. And I was referencing a post you made in this thread, so anyone could go back and see what the context was.
You didn’t say “barbaric beliefs of some Christians”, you said “barbaric religion”.
The evidence for Muhammad being a real person is roughly as strong as that for Jesus or Buddha, but I’m guessing that since this is something terrorists might kill me for saying you think it should be illegal to discuss it too.
When you edited your post after I called you out on it, yes. That next line didn’t originally exist 
I didn’t say Buddha and Jesus weren’t real. I said the figures in those cartoons weren’t racist portrayals of real people.
I edit most of my posts, sometimes multiple times. I didn’t see any calling out, just formulated my thoughts as I posted them.
But I don’t expect you to believe that, since you’d clearly much rather argue with the straw-Dibble that lives in your head.
I’m no expert, but I thought Muhammad was a known historical figure (since he was a warlord and actually had huge geopolitical impact in his own time) whereas with Jesus it’s pretty unclear but likely that his story is inspired by one specific preacher as opposed to a small group of them, but nothing definitive; the Budah is likely an amalgamation of multiple religious figures; and there’s very little evidence for any of the old testament figures being historical.
Eta: but I could be wrong about that
We know your definition of “racist” is “thing Muslims are willing to kill you over.” That’s a dead horse. I was more interested in the “real people” part. I won’t hold my breath on you explaining why you chose to bring it up only to backpedal, equivocate, and deny you ever said it when anyone tries to discuss it further as it would be about the 12th topic of that nature in this thread.
I bet you thought that was really funny, too.
Of course you were. Because that was the easiest part to put words in my mouth with.
Hi! You’re such a cute little mouse!
Whelp, I think that was the best thing to come of this thread so far - I went down a rabbit hole reading about the historocity of Muhammed, and it’s quite an interesting tale! The Roman reaction to the Muslim Conquests is fascinating, and I wish more had survived of the Sassanid perspective. But that’s a topic for another thread.
There’s essentially no material from Muhammad’s lifetime that is not part of an Islamic religious tradition written down after the fact, and for another two generations afterwards, the surviving secular literature on the movement contains almost none of the attributes that we have come to consider definitional of Muhammad and Islam. The situation is very much like that of early Christianity - obviously it came from somewhere and the idea that it had a single founder is the simplest explanation for what we do know and why its adherents universally agree that it happened that way. But, there is a huge double standard applied to how the history is written and taught.
There are some reasons to believe the basics of the Islamic religious narrative about Islam’s origins. There’s just as much reason to believe the standard alternative hypothesis: an expansionist movement based on colonial resource extraction, preaching an ecumenical mishmash of popular Abrahamic ideas from the multiple Christian, Jewish, and para-Judeo-Christian movements existing in the Mideast at the time, began to achieve military success and then invented, more or less from whole cloth, a background for one of its early monarchs, Muhammad, that strengthened claims on its special divine authority and on Arab ethnic supremacy. As with questions about “the historicity of Jesus” one has to be careful about terms. If there was a single prophet who founded Christianity and was crucified by Romans, but nothing else can be known about him, does that mean “Jesus” existed? The idea brought to mind by most people when you ask about “Jesus” is somewhat more expansive than that. How much of the Biblical story needs to be true for us to answer the question in the affirmative? There’s no objective line here and when it comes to sorting out what we actually know about Muhammad the problems are very similar.
In secondary and university education, the history of Judaism is taught as mostly a debunking of the Old Testament’s historicity and with plentiful reminders that central Jewish values in the modern world such as monotheism and opposition to human sacrifice were not so universally observed by the pre-exilic Hebrews. Christianity is taught from a historical perspective in which political reasons for a Messianic movement in Roman Judea are emphasized. Theology and the literal interpretation of scriptural myths are considered secondary if they are mentioned at all. But the “history” of Islam taught in secular classes begins with “God sent an angel to speak to Muhammad in a cave!!” For similar reasons to what’s been discussed here about the cartoons, if you bring up Islam at all you pretty much have to teach its religious narrative as actual truth. It’s an embarrassment to the field.
I have to disagree with this part. My cursory examination of the topic revealed what you described: the theory that religion was a relatively minor motivating factor in the early Islamic conquests; that the Byzantine response sees this as an Arab conquest rather than an Islamic one until later on; etc. It seems to me that the historical consensus is fairly similar to the view on Jesus - at least among western secular scholars.
Then bang goes your claim to holding criticism of Islam/mohammed to the same standard as every other religion.
If you start with the assumption that any depiction or caricature is most likely de facto racist (either in intent or aesthetics), when it relates to Islam, but not for any other religion/belief/figure then you are giving it special status. There is no other way to spin this.
Now you may think that such a special status is warranted and choose to defend it and I’ll certainly listen to the case you put. What you can’t now do with a straight face is to claim all you want is for it to be treated equally.
I also doubt it’s possible for cartoonist to draw a caricature of Lao Tzu that isn’t racist. I’m not holding Islam up to a special standard, I’m questioning the abilities of caricaturists.
Like you already said, caricaturists go for the lazy stereotype. For non-white subjects, that’s always the racist one, it seems. I said “I doubt it” because my opinion of caricaturist’ abilities is very low (except Chris Riddell, he’s usually quite good).
But the cartoonist I linked managed it with the Budah?
You do realize that Budai isn’t a representation of Gautama Buddha, right? And how fucked up the substitution is? And that that depiction wasn’t actually a caricature of Budai?
No, what am I saying of course you don’t.
if there WAS a god, I doubt he’d be half as full of himself as you are. You make Zeus look modest!
Do you get to the Cloud District very often?
No, what am I saying of course you don’t.
Repeating the subtle Skyrim reference I made, only much less subtly, is about par for the course.
As is not addressing the actual meat of my response…
Yes, I am aware that there is more than one figure refered to as “Buddha” and that the “fat buddah” figure isn’t the one that Buddhism is named after. I am curious if this means that it is immune to racial stereotyping.
And the fact you know you are making a Skyrim reference is even FUNNIER!! I thought you accidentally compared yourself to one of the most pompous and hated characters in Skyrim, but I guess you’re proud of it.