Today I read that the Mufti of the Islamic University of Al-Azhar has requested that the Danish government (no less) apologizes for the cartoons. Equally, Grand (not really) Ayatollah Sistani has issued a stern statement against the cartoons. I did not know that the two dudes even look at cartoons. I wonder if they like the Family Guy. But those two represent the corruption of Islamic religious leadership, which leads to the rise of militant fanatics within the faith. Those two seem more opposed to "offensive" cartoons than to foreign occupation or to poverty or to oppression by the governments that they serve. I wish that they just would take a vow of silence--did Sistani not take a vow of silence while living under Saddam's tyranny and he refused to say a word against him, while other clerics died fighting him? And the Mufti of Al-Azhar had lost it a while back. He threw an ash tray at an Egyptian journalist because she dared to ask him a question that he did not like.