Y’know, I always hoped this was a sick joke. It does sound like something out of the Goon Show, or Monty Python, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, or The Colbert Report.
UPDATE: Reader Stanislaw Pak points me to this version, which apparently is the original. So the image above was altered to make it ironic.
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But they’re back: Sudanese Muslims call for the death of a public school teacher who let small children name a toy bear after a classmate named Muhammad. Why don’t they get right to the source and execute the children?
Now that they’ve proved that Islam is violent, perhaps we could let them stew in their own self-created misery, and just give refugee status to any apostate, atheist, or woman who wants to leave the country.
While they’re working themselves up into a frenzy, let’s hope there are some rational elements out there. Anyone?
Science Notes 
July 17, 2008 at 07:53
[…] the insanity. There is a coevolutionary process between the forces of sanity and insanity. The more ridiculous one side gets the more incentive people on the other will have to sharpen their tools. Coevolution […]
July 17, 2008 at 19:52
Yes, it was interesting to read the tale of the student who was assaulted in a Catholic church for trying to carry his consecrated wafer back to the pew to show it to his friend, and then the overheated rhetoric about how taking a wafer home was worse than kidnapping, and the death threats against a science blogger for offering to disrespect a consecrated cracker if someone would send him one.
October 29, 2009 at 20:50
The risk of someone performing a Black Mass is always present. I remember some concern about this in my own church. It is not a matter of beating up someone for a remark. It is not a matter of beheading someone. Someone who takes the consecrated host is a thief who is not playing by the understood rules. So it’s a matter of grabbing back the stolen object. Stealing the host is a misdemeanor. It would be like stealing the mass book, the cross, etc.
May 14, 2011 at 00:50
Dude. Its a goddamn wafer.
June 18, 2012 at 05:23
Dude it’s a goddamn child…
June 27, 2012 at 09:40
Monado, Your exaggerations aren’t right either. Normative Christianity is the Golden Rule. Normative Islam is Koran 48.29 Muslims are ‘violent’ (ashidda) towards kafirs, but compassionate between each other.
Violence to ‘others’ is normative Islam.
June 29, 2012 at 12:31
Nevertheless, this image is a straw man. And you are cherry-picking. It’s as valid to quote Jesus saying that unless you hate your family, you’re not loyal enough to him.
September 30, 2009 at 15:39
[…] photograph apparently showing a protestor holding a sign saying “Behead those who say Islam is violent” did the internet rounds for a while, but was eventually shown to be […]
October 29, 2009 at 20:42
Now that national governments are under attack by fundamentalist jihadists, they (Turkey and Saudi) are hiring university professors to dig up dirt on the original texts of Islam that clearly sanction violence against the Infidels and women. This is a losing battle that will undermine their legitimacy as Islamic governments and further enrage the fundamentalists. They will end up undermining the faith of Muslims in their countries and the final battle will be between ex-Muslims (pretending to believe so they won’t be killed) and the fundamentalists. On the other hand, the more the fundamentalists let off bombs, the more ordinary people will be turned off. Neither side is winning, but eventually, modernity will defeat the fundamentalists. It is going to take another twenty years of this before most Muslims get the idea, ‘Yes, Islam is violent…very violent.’
A civilized person cannot be a Muslim.
June 18, 2012 at 05:28
Considering only 1% of Christians have left the flock after centuries of oppression, murder, mass murder, genocide, and persecution of non-believers and those of other religions, suppression of knowledge and victimization of the poor, the weak, and anyone who would ‘dare’ to speak out against these things, I do not see this tactic as a likely solution.
September 4, 2012 at 23:10
What a tool of a response.
September 6, 2012 at 11:06
Monado, I think you’re last post is delirium. What we deplore is that violence against ‘others’ is normative under sacred Sharia…blasphemers and apostates must be murdered.
All bigotry contradicts the Golden Rule, but Islam has no version of the Golden Rule. So there is no ‘bigotry’ in Islam…only authorized, normative hatred of kafirs.
Question for you: ‘Since Allah eternally commands you to hate kafirs, what is the the correct amount of hatred? When you know that you hate kafirs enough to please Allah?’
September 14, 2012 at 19:39
And Christ said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34) and “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters–yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). So don’t tell me Christianity is a religion of peace.
It’s slander to say that there’s no Golden Rule in Islam. It quotes Prophet Muhammad thus:
* “None of you have faith until you love for your neighbor what you love for yourself” (Sahih Muslim)
* “Whoever wishes to be delivered from the fire and to enter Paradise…should treat the people as he wishes to be treated.” (Sahih Muslim)
* “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself” (Forty Hadith-Nawawi)
* “None of you is a believer if he eats his full while his neighbour hasn’t anything.” (Musnad)
* “Do unto all men as you would wish to have done unto you; and reject for others what you would reject for yourselves.” (Abu Dawud)
* “Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.” (Farewell Sermon)
* “There should be neither harming nor reciprocating harm.” (Ibn- Majah)
In fact the Koran goes beyond saying the Golden Rule by stating in at least four places, “Return evil with Kindness” (13:22, 23:96, 41:34, 28:54, 42:40) and also “Serve God, and join not any partners with Him; and do good— to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer (ye meet), and what your right hands possess [the slave]: For God loveth not the arrogant, [nor] the vainglorious” (Q:4:36) .
September 14, 2012 at 21:13
Your taqiyya is insulting to those who have read the Islamic trilogy, standard commentaries and Islamic history. Crushing the kafirs is normative Islam. We are seeing it around the world at this moment. You are insulting us. Koran 48.29 contradicts the Golden Rule. The Meccan verses which encourage ‘kind words’ have been abrogated by the Verse of the Sword. You and I know that.
February 26, 2010 at 20:31
[…] Le dialogue, vraiment??? Minute là. 1- Le Moyen-Orient demande des excuses du Jyllands-Posten et du gouvernement danois donc ça ne donne pas grand chose. 2- Où sont les excuses de la communauté musulmane pour la campagne de salissage des imams danois en Égypte, les ambassades brûlées, les manifestations appelant au meurtre. […]
March 16, 2010 at 19:52
Cher Politiken,
Les suprématistes ne s’excuse jamais. Ils dominent, ils violent, ils écrasent. Narcissiques, sans conscience, sans moralité. Le pouvoir cru est leur religion.
L’islam, c’est un totalitarisme qui se cache derrière la voile du galimatias lunatique de Mohamet.
Les musulmans, n’ont-ils aucune honte?
March 19, 2010 at 02:13
That sign is a fake altered in PhotoShop.
March 19, 2010 at 09:46
The original sign read ‘SLAUGHTER THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM’.
That isn’t much better, is it?
If you say Islam is violent, we’ll have to kill you!
Anyone who hasn’t realized this is Islam’s basic message is a moron.
September 21, 2012 at 16:33
They say don’t feed the trolls but, quite frankly, I find them entertaining.
I see you fail to have the capacity to make distinctions. Is what is true of individuals true of groups? Put differently, do all American Christians think that god is punishing American soldiers by killing/allowing them to die because American acceptance of gay marriage is growing? After all, the Westboro Baptist Church believes exactly that. Are all atheist political leaders blood thirsty tyrants because some of them committed what amounts to “genocide”? Are all blacks criminals because X percentage of them are? Are all white Americans racist because some of them are? There is a tremendous irony in that last question.
I won’t get into what that kind of a world view–the group is responsible for the behaviour of individuals–says about the much vaunted notion of “individual responsibility” but I will admit that the two main monotheistic religious texts are full of sex and violence.
November 25, 2015 at 16:48
Opinion polls exist. They show clearly that the percentage of Muslims who support the sort of things you deplore is larger than that of Christians by at least an order of magnitude. Yes treat people as individuals, but when large numbers of individuals are arriving in your country who are statistically likely to be involved in terror, have poor employment performance and low levels of education it is the legal responsibility of politicians who are elected to represent the interest of their citizens by weighing these facts. The fact that the country already has intolerant citizens does not justify inviting in more intolerant citizens.
Indeed, if you think a large number of Christians are intolerant, racist, backwards and violent then the idea of a multicultural society is even more bizarre. You are saying that a large number of people in these groups are stuck in middle age thinking and tend towards violence, hate each other, and your response is that they should live with each other in large numbers? This is a recipe for violence and fundamentalism.
March 19, 2010 at 09:49
There is no tolerance in Islam.
There is no free speech in Islam.
April 7, 2010 at 04:11
thank you for your information..
June 8, 2010 at 15:09
These posters are all photoshopped…there are many versions of this same guy with different messages.
June 9, 2010 at 19:36
The second one is the original placard, from the protest against a Danish cartoon. He was seen on television carrying too.
June 10, 2010 at 16:21
The point is this…
…Islam does command violence against all other religionists to make them submit to Moslem rule.
Criticizing Mohammed or anything about Islam gets kafirs killed.
Vigilante violence is normative Islam, not photoshop.
There have been 3 deadly jihad attacks every day since 9-11.
November 15, 2010 at 08:32
[…] Mer: “Behead those who say Islam is violent.” […]
March 28, 2012 at 00:52
Are there actually people who think that ‘Behead those who Insult Islam’ is better than ‘Behead those who say that Islam is violent’?
The latter is more amusing but they both say about the same thing – that Islam is violent.
One of the problem is that people bend over backwards to accommodate some of the ridiculous actions of Islamists. Is it proper to burn down buildings and kill dozens of people because someone prints a cartoon you do not like? Everybody has been cowed by the violence if the followers of Islam. If someone tears a page of the Koran the politicians start lining up to apologize and leaders of Islamist countries (such as the despicable Karzai) come out to fan the flames.
The only good news is that they are killing more of themselves than others.
March 31, 2012 at 22:07
It is important to get the facts, otherwise you are arguing against a straw man and not people’s actual opinions. And yes, I think it’s very important. For one thing, the altered text slanders the sign-makers by making the comment self-contradictory. For another, it is dishonestly untrue. For a third thing, “Behead those who insult Islam” shines a spotlight on what crawls out from under the rocks in Christianity: death threats and rape threats against a teenager who asked her school to remove an unconstitutional banner, statements by politicians that non-Christians don’t belong in the U.S., can’t be patriotic and are bad citizens, and violence from vandalism to murder against people in Christian communities in the U.S. if their atheism becomes known. Or how about the vitriol aimed at PZ Myers—hundreds of death threats, frothing outrage, and episcopal pronouncements that throwing a magic wafer in the garbage is worse than not just murder, but genocide? Just last week the body of a missing atheist was found and his friend accused of murdering him. Two weeks ago, a woman in California, who had lived peacefully with her neighbors for twenty years and who had helped the U.S.soldiers train for deployment in Iraq, was beaten to death with a tire iron for being a Muslim terrorist. With the dishonest sign, you are making fun of idiots. With the honest sign, you are looking in the mirror.
June 27, 2014 at 09:39
[…] "Behead those who say Islam is violent" | Science Notes […]
July 20, 2016 at 12:59
If it’s been altered, it was done before 2007, which is when i first saw it. i think it’s been altered from “Behead those who say Islam is violent” to the less evil version. Don’t believe the lie. The “ironic” one is the original, & realistically reflects the mindset of extremist Islam. You can’t reason with them at all, & they think these irrational ways of thinking is completely normal & ok. i can tell you this much: no one goes to heaven for murder. No one.
November 22, 2016 at 12:04
Just like people who believe, on no evidence, that Jesus and their version of God must exist.