Here’s a video of Swedish artist Lars Vilks being attacked during a presentation on free speech today at Sweden’s Uppsala University.

Lars was the guy who drew the cartoon of Muhammad as a dog that made a bunch of Muslims go apeshit.

This latest attack bugs me a lot.  Here’s the disclaimer: I’ve received tons of hatemail and many threats and had more than a couple disturbing run-ins with religious nuts, and few if any of those nuts were Muslim.  By and large all the Muslims I know are awesome and not at all nutty.  I find Christian nuts the creepiest of all the religious nuts.  But I am way more scared of nutty Muslims than nutty Christians.

Lars has become a symbol for the right to criticize religion.  That’s a right we can’t lose.  I don’t believe this is about religion or values, I think it’s about dogma.  There is nothing inherently evil or wrong with what nutty Christians or Muslims believe – what’s wrong is that it’s no longer a set of beliefs, it’s a set of Truths that can’t be questioned, and that’s a dangerous thing.  Lars is completely right that it’s important to be able to criticize religion.

Lets see if we can come up with something to help Lars.

Also, the FSM does not mind if you draw him as something unclean.. like a stripper.

I was reading the lyrics of the current pirate’s theme song and was disappointed about the lies, so i revised it. here you go:

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me.