How to play mind games with stupid Germans

From Monday's issue of the newspaper Die Welt, one of the assumed strongholds of conservative media in Germany, comes a stunning piece of journalism:

More Jokes about Muslims Please!
The Secretary General of the Central Council of Muslims [in Germany] wants to laugh at his fellow-Muslims more often. At WELT.de he criticizes how uptight German comedians and artists are, as soon as it's about Islam: One can very well make fun of a Muslim without hurting his dignity.

By Aiman A. Mazyek
[...]
I, too, would have liked to smile and laugh at Muslims. Is that not permitted? Who is prohibiting it? Maybe a Fatwa? A body of censors? Notabene, I am talking about laughing, not hurtful sneering at or dirty jokes about Islam. One can very well make fun of a Muslim without hurting his dignity or can't one? One can waffle about his putative flaws without besmirching his religion.
[...]
Granted, the narrow-minded and know-alls in our community will speak up and tell us in their repressed way that they don't understand a thing. They are not just suffering from a blatant deficit in humour but from their own belief as well, which they wish to live rather as stone-age Islam... the Islamic tradition knows many prominent examples, where one's own or the leg of somebody else is pulled. Thus, the Prophet Mohammed has often shown wit and mockery.
[...]

(Translation mine!)
Without doubt! And specifically at the stonings (snicker), the amputations (giggle), the beheadings (chuckle) he attended.

I mean this is so rock-hard, impregnably, intransigently, indissolubly and resolutely dumb that it leaves me speechless. Well, almost.

We have seen worldwide riots by followers of this faith and people losing their lifes over a couple of cartoons as acid as thin lemonade and as exciting as Paris Hilton's antics. We are seeing a faith, or better: a polit-cult, that promotes "honour" killings of women who decide to live like Western women, a faith whose followers perform beheadings of hostages on television, stonings, floggings, limb amputations, hangings of teenagers and children, terrorist attacks on innocent civilians, women and children and other hilariously funny gimmicks.

But what I like best is:

One can waffle about his putative flaws without besmirching his religion.

But one can not talk seriously about his real "flaws", right?

And in this country a so-called conservative newpsaper does not just print that cooly calculated and cleverly simpering drivel in all seriousness, they even sell it as an example of "enlightened" and "moderate" Islam.

Mind you, stupid is not that man, stupid are the chaps from DIE WELT who let themselves be led around like tame dancing bears at their nose rings by printing that neat little bit of propaganda.

He was yanking their chains, and ours as well. Or, to use another and even more hackneyed metaphor: He was testing the water.

I bet Mazyek, who has a Syrian father and a German mother and who is the leader of the local Free Democrats at his hometown Alsdorf, near Aachen, finds it pretty warm, cosy and agreeable.