You call that an Effigy?
Nothing gets a crowd all riled up more than a nice big effigy burning. In the past 5 years we've seen some very nice effigies of Bush, Cheney, Blair and various and sundry Jews burned around the world. They're clever constructions that play on Bush's big ears, Blair's teeth, and Cheney's hate-filled scowl.
So I was pretty excited that Muslims were getting all bent out of shape again over something nonsensical again; something like the pictures of Muhammed that unite them in fury against the Jews and Americans - except this time against the Pope; that's a bit of a twist. Apparently the Pope said something like "14th century Muslims can be violent." But the effigies seemed haphazard; sloppy, lazy even. Do the Muslims not know what the Pope looks like? It seems possible.
Basra, Iraq - I didn't know you could burn German flags! This effigy looks nothing like the Pope, so they're trying to make sure we get the idea by burning the German flag too. Except we all know that when Ratzinger was serving his country back in the day that the German flag looked a little more... stylish than that, you know what I mean?
Ahh, there we go. Homemade too. He's a regular Betsy Ross.
Pakistan - What kind of Pope effigy was that? This looks like an effigy of Santa Claus or Dom Deluise. There's drawings on his legs, but I doubt they made him seem
any more Pope-esque.
Kashmir - They're not even trying here. An old cardigan sweater draped over his arms? Have the people of Kashmir ever seen a picture of any Pope? You can't kill him if you don't know what he's wearing or what he looks like. Geez, he might be right behind you. Still, bonus points for making his head some sort of green smoke bomb. Crowd seems really apathetic too.
India - India has about 120 million Mulsims, and for their effigy they set a tire on fire in the middle of a street? Wow. Not even anyone around yelling for the cameras. Allah is most displeased with your effigy. He told me so. You know that right after this picture was taken one of their trained elephants stamped out the fire with his feet.
This guy is totally the winner. We've got some sort of Logan's Run mask meets the Ku Klux Klan, which works for them, b/c they hate Jews too. There's a couple gays holding hands in the background which shows that they're not completely fundamental - they're ok with gays, they just really hate the Pope. Cool looking cross on the chest too. This looks almost exactly like my 6th grade Halloween costume except it was black and I had a foil-wrapped cardboard
axe.