So, this is what the fuss is all about.
If anything, it looks like a playful ribbing of the cultural differences between Islam and Western culture. Of course it deals with generalizations, but not something that readers can't appreciate as a shortcut to humor. Yet, the main thing is that the cartoon by Berkeley Breathed isn't mean. It's nowhere near some of the barbs that the late Johnny Hart ( of B.C. fame) would make about Islam or any other belief that didn't coincide with his own. If anything Breathed makes as much fun of Americans as he does Muslims.
Even if you can't appreciate the humor of Opus, I can't see a reasonable justification for newspapers to drop this strip.
Update:
There's an article in Editor & Publisher dealing with the controversy. The reasons given for papers not carrying Opus are a combination of Islamic references and sexual innuendo. At least 25 clients have declined to publish the offending comics. Prior reports have mentioned the Washington Post as one of those papers, a really poor example coming from one of the nations flagship media institutions.
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