Right around the time I started university, the original Muhammad cartoon controversy began and soon escalated into rioting and deaths. Nearly a decade later and at least a dozen more people are dead because someone drew some cartoons. Even the death of only the cartoonists in question would have been too many dead over cartoons; most who have died over the various sets of cartoons had nothing to do with any of them.

Back in 2005, I was a Muslim. Here in 2015, I’m an ex-Muslim atheist. My feelings about the cartoons are the same: They’re trashy pieces of arguable race-bait not worth killing or dying for, and the right to publish trashy race-baiting cartoons is definitely worth dying (and maybe killing?) for.

In that way, I was in a minority among the Muslim students at UC Irvine. It certainly felt like I was the only one to both see the problems with the cartoons and the far more frightening and pressing problems with the violent reactions to the cartoons. I tried to talk some of the other Muslim students I knew, but they weren’t listening. Frustrated, I turned to verse, my preferred form of expression back then.

My impassioned if somewhat maudlin words convinced exactly none of the ‘splainy male Muslims for whom I wrote the poem.

It was a major sleight of hand
It was upon us a cruel joke grand
We all moved forward as a unified group:
sisters, brothers, we fell for the dupe

An invisible hand led us to the actions,
which sparked such violent reactions
Whether brought about by free will or by fate,
our beloved Ummah rose, gaping, to the bait

We took it, swallowed it, and in the process,
created a violent orgiastic show of excess
Did the Prophet himself not teach gentleness,
and return each hard blow with a prayer’s caress?

Do we follow his example enough to be able,
to even bring assassination to the table?
Why did the cartoonist Allah’s apostle lampoon?
To push the Mu`minoon into the role of buffoon!

To be able to portray us like savages crude;
to put the troubled Ummah into a sulking brood;
to make us look like we hate free speech:
they have succeeded in their goals, each upon each

To put us on the defensive and to us pit,
‘gainst old allies — into the bait we bit
We looked the backwards fools of the world:
such was the tableau that before me unfurled

I know that we are not buffoons or fools,
that among us are the world’s purest jewels;
and I know that our Ummah is eternal and for all–
I could not even conceive of witnessing its fall

But do the non-believers know what I ascertain?
Do they know the truth of Untruth’s reign?
Shall this matter tear the whole world apart?
Will reason from the world so wholly depart?

We must open our hearts and tear asunder assumptions
Follow the Sunnah and cast aside our presumptions
If we were like the Prophet, there would be no sense,
in making the world into a place so tense

For who could Allah’s beloved ever satirize?
We have cast a veil over our eyes
They truly mock not him — they us mock
Of our true situation we must take stock