The Toronto Star's Richard Gwyn columnized Tuesday on the cartoons crisis and various high-profile acts of religious disrespect by Muslims and Christians alike.

An excerpt:

Today, Muslims are full of righteous fury about the disrespect shown to their religion. But the same demand is long overdue to be made of Muslims themselves.

Perhaps the worst insult to a religion in recent times took place four years ago in Afghanistan, when the Taliban demolished the giant, 2,000-year-old statues of Buddha at Bamiyan. Here were Muslims wantonly destroying the beautiful artifacts of what is surely the world's gentlest and most accommodating religion.

The Taliban, of course, represents only a small minority of Muslims. But when that desecration occurred there were no mass protests against it throughout the Islamic world.

The harm done by Muslims to another religion stirred little sympathy, or apology, from the Muslim umma.

Just as Muslims deserve to be called to account for their indifference to the values of others — the incessant racist comments about Jews in Arab newspapers and school texts as another example — the same applies to Christians.

Except, in this instance, the religion treated with contempt is the religion of Christians themselves. Which example to cite among all the examples of contempt by Christians for Christianity, from the Piss Christ art work (a crucifix soaked in urine) to Martin Scorsese's deliberately mocking movie, The Last Temptation of Christ.

The best example, surely, is the act once staged by one of the West's most successful performers.

To keep her audiences captivated by an agreeable sense of shock, Madonna once regularly simulated masturbating herself with a crucifix. From critics — fearful of being unfashionable — there was scarcely a peep about this desecration of the most sacred symbol of the world's largest religion.

There'll be no more cartoons of Muhammad in western newspapers. The rampant anti-Semitism in the Arab world may, at last, be brought under control.

And, finally, just perhaps, we may be about to witness an end to the incessant expressions of contempt by secular westerners for a man who — even if indeed nothing more than just a man 2000 years ago — was as pure and gentle as anyone who ever walked this earth. As, incidentally, Muslims, who revere Christ as a prophet, would agree.